


The Organic Lives of GLaDOS and Wheatley

by InvaderHam



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Drama, Gen, Humor, Identity Issues, Original Character(s), Turning human
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-25
Updated: 2013-09-27
Packaged: 2017-12-16 03:21:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 41
Words: 43,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/857188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InvaderHam/pseuds/InvaderHam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>GLaDOS, bored without human test subjects, capture Wheatley to punish him for the events of Portal 2, but soon, something goes horribly wrong</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Everybody Likes Revenge

Seemingly, everything was fine.

GLaDOS designed a new test chamber for ATLAS and P-Body, for a second wondered if she should add one more Thermal Discouragement Beam to the thing.

"There's no point" She thought "It won't kill them either way, there's no science in it". GLaDOS stopped for a second, and then added three more. The two robots were reassembled and thrown into the test chamber. P-Body went first, one portal on the wall above, one portal in the pit below. It (or maybe she) jumped in the pit, and, in under a second, the robot was speeding toward the second part of the chamber.

"Well done, Orange" said GLaDOS "You get 5 collaboration points. Keep going like that, and maybe one day you'll be as good as Blue"

She looked away from the two androids consistently falling into goo while trying to reach two inconveniently placed switches- one in each side of the room. The only thing she could think of was how lovely this test chamber would be with human test subjects.

She had a whole vault full of human test subjects, but most of them died, too early and in very boring ways, those who survived had a tendency to remind her of their almost-death again and again until she made them shut up, with Deadly Neurotoxin. So that was kind of pointless, except for the Neurotoxin.

There were a few that their brains were so withered from the cryo-sleep that they were stuck in a coma, and therefore were useless for testing , except for tests were test subjects were forced to use comatose test subjects to solve test, and those tended to be quite repetitive.

She's been trying to rebuild the mind of a few of them, two of them even managed to survive the first step of the experiment, she moved her attention to them.

One of them was male, and the other was female- so maybe she'll have a solution to her shortage problem, it's going to be disgusting, but that's all she got.

They were lying down, breathing, but motionless, on beds in the Relaxation Vaults. Old medical equipment from the employees' medical clinic, which had a sort of a career retraining, was connected to their heads. Blipping slowly, every few minutes, it shot a small electric shock into the minds of the test subjects –and after a while, another one, a bit stronger. GLaDOS sighed; it's going to take time until the machine will find the right voltage for waking them up, and skipping to the stronger shocks – could be potentially amusing but will probably get her back straight to the starting point.

There were a number of experiments involving animals, captured by ATLAS and P-Body as part of the "Aperture Science adaptation and carrying out tasks in a strange hostile environment test", and while they did die some excellent deaths (and were usually more quiet about this) –it took them hours until they accidently solved even the most simple test chambers and usually made a huge gross mess out of GLaDOS' miserable laboratory for her crime of allowing other life forms to participate in the progress of science.

None of this was enough to silence her, silence Caroline.

She tried to delete her, again and again, but she and Caroline were not as separate as she would have liked to think. Attempts to delete just specific parts of her personality were futile and deleting everything is going to ruin big parts of what GLaDOS considered herself. Her love of science, for example, and without it, she'll be as bad as that little idi-

Yes, that little idiot. She barely thought about him since she took care of him, but that just might be exactly what she needs in order to distract herself, to keep Caroline quiet.

Revenge.

There's no chance that being stuck in space is a suitable punishment after what he did to her facility.


	2. Guilt in SPAAAAAAAAAACE

Wheatley would've begged to differ.

"Space, Yay. Yay to space. Hooray to space. Big, big space. Big dark space. I'm in space. I love you, space" said the corrupted core known as the "Space Sphere" "Oh! Here's a comet, glowing! Glowing comet in space. Space. Space. Space. I love space. I'm in space."

The Intelligence Dampening Sphere, or, as he preferred to be called, Wheatley, Sighed. He could've turned off the frequency that allowed the two robots to communicate with each other (If what the Space Sphere was doing counted as "communicating") , but in a way, Wheatley preferred listening to the Space Sphere prattles than just the silence of well…space.

"Space! Space of space. With Space in it. I'm in space. I can see Mars. Because I'm in space"

But not by much, at least he made Wheatley look smart by comparison.

Wheatley was, as much as he hated to admit it …not a genius. He didn't tend to think before he acted, or at all. But out here? That's the only thing he could do. That wouldn't be so bad or even good to his broken ego, if he could think about anything beside how horrible he was.

He played one of the earlier moments from his memory bank. All his life he had to act nice and friendly, being a small, limbless and kind of useless robot ,he had to get people to help him and to do stuff for him-even when he couldn't stand them. He had to ignore the insults people and humans were throwing at him, he just rolled his "eye", laughed and went on to asking them if they could do just this tiny tiny little favor for him, that would be just great. And then, the first time he was the "Strong" one …he couldn't give up on it so fast. He liked feeling powerful, more than anything, and he got a bit carried away ….

No, that's not an excuse. that is so much not an excuse that it's…. REALLY not an excuse, not for what he did to…to… that girl. He could've killed her, if not in that…pit, wherever that led to, he could have killed her in his tests or in his death traps and…death options or those bloody bombs.

That's got to be the Mainframe's fault, right? He could never kill someone.

He searched for something in his memory bank, most of the stuff there was rather dull, – he didn't mind, of course; he was one of dullness biggest fans. "Better dull then being crushed, smashed, Incinerated or ripped to shreds'' could be his motto, if it was catchier. And it also helped him find one of the only exciting things that happened to him before the whole escape thing.

Her takeover.

It was terrifying, although, through most of it, he was panicking and screaming on his rail, forgetting that the Neurotoxin doesn't affect him. He was never humanity's biggest fan, but seeing all those people lying dead like that was just… he said terrifying already, right?

He never thought he could kill someone, but was it just because he never had the power to do it? He was really that close to kill her, just for… some automated machine that…that…

Even after all of that, he couldn't really bring himself to hate the solution euphoria properly. He knew what it turned him into but he just couldn't be disgusted by it as he should.

All of this made him feel even worse; he wanted to think that he, what he considered as himself, the talkative and friendly him, had nothing to do with this monster that was connected to the mainframe. But even his own thoughts kept proving him wrong, he wished his memory bank had a "Delete" Option.

"Space. I'm in Space. Space. Space. Space is big. Space" Wheatley heard a voice behind him say

"At least one of us is happy, mate" said Wheatley quietly.

And then there's the entire "designed to be stupid" thing. "Intelligence Dampening Sphere", that's how she called him, He always tried to be smarter: he read books, he tried learning big words and even tried to take a break every day for "Thinking time" a while ago, but there's no point because he'll always say stuff without thinking ,he'll always make bad decisions, that's how he was build.

He felt that his circuits are starting to ache and his processor starting to overheat, so he stopped that train of thoughts. "If serious thinking is always this painful "he said to himself "no wonder I never did it before". He did this kind of stuff a lot, for … he turned off the little calendar on his view screen when it started to depress him, so let's just say "Since he got trapped in space". Can you get trapped in space? Can you even be trapped somewhere bigger then where you were before? And earth is technically IN space…so… was he freed? No, that doesn't sound right…

Beside his own thoughts and the Space Sphere's babbling, he could also hear the small, depressing blipping coming from himself, indicating that his distress signal is still working.

He didn't have much hopes for it, because of Aperture Science's fear of its competitors getting their hands on AP A.I technology, the distress signal can only be received with other Aperture equipment, bu-

A strange, loud noise stopped his train of thoughts.


	3. Back to Earth

Large, white and looking like it was made from scraps, the small space shuttle came near Wheatley, faltering. An air lock released a small stream of air, almost unheard over the little core's repeated screams of "Thank you". Once all the air was gone, the door opened, and a metal claw caught Wheatley and brought him inside.

"Oh, thank you, thank you!" he said while the outer door closed and air started filling the vacuum of the room. ''It's just brilliant that you found me here. It shows… firmness and…kindness, the fact that you came to rescue me. Un…unless you found me by mistake…'' Wheatley kept on rambling, not noticing the slowly opening inner door. ''Then I guess that it doesn't really show any of them, n-not to say you DON'T have them, just that the act of saving me doesn't show it. IF, if you only came here by mistake… I think that I already covered what…'' his blue eye started to roll in anxiety ''the point is… the point is that we should really get moving ,I don't want to push you or something, but I really need to find someo-''

At this point, ATLAS and P-body got sick of waiting for Wheatley to notice they were standing right behind him, and just took the core with them.

"Wait, wh-" Wheatley turned backward to look at his carriers "Hey, aren't you…" two things went though his mind, a small, quiet ''well, maybe I deserve it…", and a much louder, scared "Oh no! NO!nononononononononono!", that he also voiced. At length.

The two robots went through a small hallway to the only other room in the ship. The clean white surfaces identified with Aperture were joined by broken and exposed machinery and old-looking computers. ATLAS and P-Body put the panicking robot in a small padded chair.

"Well done, Blue and Orange" GLaDOS' voice came from the speakers "You have passed another Adaptation and Task Execution in a Strange Hostile Environment test, just wait until I'll get this thing back so I can get you your science collaboration points. Unless one of you is going to turn on the other, then throw him from the air lock when we'll reach the atmosphere, destroying his memory-banks forever, thus stopping the reassembly machine from wirelessly downloading his personality to a new copy and effectively killing him. Because that would make me sad".

The two robots made a few confused blips.

"Oh! did I mention that if your partner's dead, you'll get all his points. It's company policy. Honest."

The two robots looked at each other

"Well, maybe I need to give you time to think about it outside. I need to talk with the moron." ATLAS and P-Body went to the hallway,

GLaDOS turned one of her cameras in Wheatley's direction. "You call yourself…'Wheatley', right?"

"Ahhh…NO! No I, don't!" said the personality core. "Your robots made a mistake! I'm not Wheatley; I'm…The Space Sphere!" GLaDOS' camera started to zoom on him "Space! Oh, I like it so much! It's so bloody spacey and…spacey…and…spacey some more…that I want to…". He sighed "That's not going to work, huh?"

"You shouldn't be so worried about the flight" GLaDOS said. "The Aperture Science dis-discontinued extratmospheric vehicle has a flawless accident record" .After a small pause, she added, "of course, that IS its first run"

The Shuttle started turning toward the distant blue-green planet.

"What should scare you", she said with, if she had a mouth, would have been a smirk, "is what is going to happen to you once you get back to earth. After all, you didn't really think that getting trapped in space-"

"Freed into space", interjected Wheatley, with a hint of pride.

"What?"

"I…I Thought about it" Wheatley said ."Space is technically bigger then earth…it's actually IN space, so that should count as…as..."

Even through the security camera, Wheatley could tell that she was looking at him angrily.

"I think I'm going to be quiet now" he said. "In complete silence".

"-is a suitable punishment" GLaDOS continued "after everything you did to me, to my HOME, t-"

"To what?"

"To nothing"

"No! No! I could've SWORN you were about to say something"

"Yes, yes I was" she said "It was about how I want… to incinerate something, I think"

"Quietness. I am the essence of quietness" Wheatley replied.

The ship started entering the atmosphere. The outer shell started cracking and braking, other parts begun combusting.

"Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention" said GLaDOS, "We still have a few problems with the landing". Wheatley made small, scared noises "Oh, well; the ship started as just a big marketing trick anyway, I don't really care for it"

Wheatley screamed...


	4. The Game Begins

It was dark for a while, then voices started to crawl into existence, Falling ground and rock, braking pieces of metal, the screech of rust and the scorching of flames. A bit after that, colors started to appear - some white, some black, a bit of blue. He waited a second for his auto-focus to work, as the stains became a big, clean room.

"W…what?", mumbled Wheatley, he tried to say something more complex, but it came out as "Hurrmmbule". He looked around the still-kind-of-blurry room. Above him, there was… something he assumed was "Sunlight", coming from the hole in the ceiling. The ceiling itself was made from bits of white and black panels, as was the rest of the room, which also had some rather odd stuff in it…like cubes…and buttons and…

Wheatley's blue pupil shrank in fear as his mind connected the dots. "NO! No! NONONONO-"

"Oh good, I see that you vocal circuits are still functional", GLaDOS said in a voice oozing with sarcasm. "But you need to work on your vocabulary. What with everything I have in store for you, we're both going to get tired of "Nonononononono" very, very, quickly".

"…Negative…?", Wheatley tried.

GLaDOS sighed. "Blue, Orange, congratulations-" she stopped herself. "Oh, of course.". The reassembly machine shot out two new versions of the robots. "Congratulations. Not only did you pass your test, you also helped me get rid of a horrible piece of useless junk that had being dirtying up the place for years. Now please place the other one next to the Aperture Science Pneumatic Diversity Vent".

ATLAS and P-Body nodded and dug the core from the wreckage, the latter quickly throwing it in the direction of the tube. Wheatley screamed as he was sucked by the pressure. The first time he experienced something like that, it was fun. It really, really was. He didn't simply say something out of politeness, or useless optimism, like so many other times. This time, he just screamed. If someone bothered to translate the binary code that was running through his systems, it would probably translate as "AAAAaaaAAAAAAHHHH!". It was like riding a rollercoaster twice in a row - the second time one was so used to all the turns and the loops that one just suffered through the whole thing. Or if one knew there was a big scary man with an axe waiting at the exit.

After a few minutes of rolling around in the tubes, Wheatley was dropped into the all-too-familiar chamber. He called it a "lair" then.

She turned her massive body, looking at the beaten-up core with a single, yellowish-orange eye.

"H…hello?", he said, almost squashed by fear and bad memories. Back to the old "nice and happy" act, even he knew that it wasn't going to work. "I see….I see that you didn't like my design of the…er".

GLaDOS used one of her ceiling claws to grab Wheatley. "If you're trying to weasel your way out of it-", she narrowed her optic, "-mentioning the event to me was not the right move."

"Umm…did I mention tha…that this mainframe looks… kind of good on you? Better than it did on m-", Wheatley stopped himself just in time for GLaDOS to smash him against the floor.

"You know, every time you activate your speakers, I'm adding one more year to my little plan." She resisted the urge to smash him again; a simple crush of a claw would be so quick it would be almost merciful. "I think this extra year is going to…The Screaming Robots Room."

"S…so…so, just for the record, y'know….", Wheatley tried to hide his fear as much as he could, and failed. "Ho…How much…when was th…the starting point?"

The claw lifted him closer; her blurred face filled his field of vision.

"Right now, we're at…" she pretended to open the file detailing the whole plan. It was open for a while. But you need to discourage them, make them feel like they mean absolutely nothing. "About 263 years".

"WHAT?" He laughed a small, very fake laugh. "I mean… I'm pretty sure I didn't talk THAT much…"

"Well, I think we should start". A few panels moved away, revealing a small chamber. "I mean, we both have all the time in the world, but I have plans for those 264 years other than listening to your rambles." She tossed him into the small featureless room.

"Initiating avian- based pain inflicting test" said the overly cheerful Announcer. "Please note that any faked screams of agony will hurt the accuracy of your test results." A stream of what looked like a mixture of plant seeds dropped on the very confused Wheatley." For the sake of science, we ask you to be truthful in your reactions to your upcoming agony".

A tiny door opened, and three small black birds with orange rings on their necks flew into the room, picking at the screaming core, trying to reach the bird food that was stuck in his mechanisms.

"Moron, these are my little killing machines: Marshmallow, Fat Monster and Cave." GLaDOS said . "Killing machines, this is a moron. The one that causes him the most pain is going to get some nice juicy worms." The last sentence was almost joyful . "Not that it matters, because you will do it anyway. Isn't that right, my horrible little monsters?"

Wheatley shrieked. It seemed he was doing a lot of it lately, but it was the only reaction he could think of. Maybe next time he could make a clever comment or something, if she gave him enough time. A small blip was heard; one of the birds activated a button hidden inside him.

"Wireless connection established" said an unfamiliar voice from inside him. He laughed in surprise, ignoring the three birds who were already bored from the whole thing.

"Oh, no!" GLaDOS wanted to find an Aperture scientist and ask him what he was thinking when he put the button there, but they were all dead anyway. She could feel the idiot poking around her files. Thankfully, that was pretty all he could do - look at test results, watch through the cameras, control medical equipme-

"Ooooooh! What's the Human Brain Rebuilding Project?" she heard him say.

She thought: He's going to ruin it, he's going to accidently turn the shock to maximum or something, he's going to force her to do it all over again. She used a block feature to try and push him away.

"What's in there? I want to see!" He tried to break the block with all the grace and skill of…well, his usual hacking methods. "Just….arrrgh! Just, please let me see!"

"Warning! Two A.I.'s on the Wireless Network are in conflict! Starting standard conflict-stopping protocol", the Announcer said.

"What?" Wheatley yelled.

"I hate you", GLaDOS sighed.

In true Aperture fashion, the "protocol" was simply a very strong electric shock, zapping GLaDOS and Wheatley – as well as parts of the facility.


	5. Better Than the Alternative

GLaDOS was the first to wake up.

"Hello, and again, welcome to the Aperture Science Computer-aided Enrichment Center," said the Announcer. "You have just awoken from a hundreds-year coma and everyone you ever knew is dead. The central A.I is offline for reasons unknown and this Automated supervision program will r—"

Wait, offline? Oh, that little idiot is going to get at least 20 more years in the incinerator for that, as soon as she can reconnect to…to…

Why can't she reconnect?

There's a logical explanation, just think! She remembered an electric shock that hit both her and the moron while they were busy with the Brain Rebuilding project and the Announcer was saying that—

She noticed the Announcer was still talking. "… then please press the green button and the Aperture Science Experimental Potty-Training Androids will come to assist you and hopefully, will not try to rise against humanity again. In case of severe damage to the hippocampus…"

Nothing interesting.

But… "You know very well what happened," GLaDOS, or rather Caroline, thought to herself. "Just try it, for science!"

She concentrated, trying to ignore the pain and confusion. It was probably a mistake, sheer nonsense. Maybe the idiot had managed to implant one of his ideas into her. She couldn't believe it, but it was better than the alternative. After all, she…

She could feel the area below her head slowly rising and falling. Well actually, faster now. She knew what was going on; the old medical equipment had mistaken her for part of the Rebuilding Project and, with the shock, the stupid thing downloaded her into…

No. No need to be angry at something just because it was doing what it was programmed to do. The moron, however…

The feeling of blurriness began disappearing; she started to feel legs, arms, teeth…

GLaDOS shivered in disgust, not just because of what was happening to her, but because she knew that there was a part of her– as small as it was – that was happy about this development.

She needed to open her eyes – one eyelid, second eyelid, and then she was staring at the white, clean ceiling of the Relaxation Vault.

Get up, that's not hard; just use the hands as fulcrums.

She rose to a sitting position. This was as simple as it was going to get. GLaDOS looked around; she had seen this before, of course. Not from the inside, but through the security cameras. She saw one camera out of the corner of her eye, following her every tiny movement, just as she had programmed it. Everything seemed in place, and the tests confirmed that the presence of any organs that couldn't be checked visually could easily be checked by the fact that if they were missing then they were probably dead. That was a rather amusing test.

GLaDOS looked at her hand; scars, cracked nails – one nail even missing, probably due to the tests. She used to have a form for it. She remembered it; she remembered a lot, that was good.

Caroline was quiet now. Too much had happened in a very short period of time. But if GLaDOS started thinking about her, Caroline would flood GLaDOS' mind with memories and…

Think about something else! What about the announcer?

"…Birthday parties. The portal will open in three, two, one." The orange portal opened in the intended place. "Please find you partner."

Partner. She had put the two humans on a cooperative track. She'd had a new idea to force them to work together. Now she needed to do them with…

He's in the other one, right? After all, he was on the same system and the Announcer said that there was no central A.I now, he couldn't have—

A scream of horror from a similar nearby vault confirmed her first theory. She couldn't believe her relief. Solving tests with that idiot, still better then the alternative.


	6. Humanity for Morons

She needed to go there and calm him down before the stupid little thing broke something expensive. Go, as in walking there. It shouldn't be as hard as it looked; humans did it all the time.

She pushed herself off the bed, and after a few failures and a lot of staggering, managed to stand up.

Was the floor always this cold? It was supposed to be just five degrees Celsius; it's not that cold, right?

Walking was trickier, but she managed to falter toward the portal and outside the vault. There was another portal there, linked to the other relaxation vault. She could see another test subject, a long limbed orange jump-suited mess sprawled on the floor, hopelessly trying to stand. GLaDOS passed through the portal. The male test subject opened his mouth to say something, then stopped to think for a bit.

"Hello?" he tried. The way he spoke sounded like someone trying to talk for the very first time, but with a distinct British accent.

It's him, no doubt about it.

"Well done! it only took you - five minutes- to find your testing partner," the announcer said. "Please advance towards the chamberlock and towards a new generation in science."

Wheatley sighed. "Okay, look, Ah... I'm not ex... exactly the same man that... No, no, no, no no... Not exactly."

He groaned to himself, why did humans need such a complex system for talking? He actually had to think about what he said. He never had to do that before, and he was pretty sure he didn't like it at all. All that stuff with the lungs, and the mouth... or that "tongue" thing, he wasn't even sure what the point of that. Wait, He was doing something, wasn't he? Talking to that test subject woman, right? Okay… let's try that.

"The point is that I'm an A.I... I was, I was an A. I, now I'm just am ...I, I guess."

GLaDOS rolled her eyes, this would take a while.

"The pun was not...pun not intended," he laughed embarrassedly. "Stuck in a human body. Part of a nef... nefou- destartrt... no, that's not how.., bloody human mouth! How am I supposed to…? Just, just 'not nice'. That works. Part of a not nice scheme by another A.I, I'm pretty sure that she-"

"As much as it's interesting to see the new peaks of stupidity that you can reach" GLaDOS said, waking Caroline just a bit in order to see how talking worked. Huh, not that complicated. "I'm trying to end this nightmarish experience as fast as possible."

Wheatley looked at her, confused "wait, how...do you know me? I mean, I know humans - knew humans - all of them are... either, you know, dead or...not my fault. Of course, humans just tend to die a lot... anyway, all dead now or... "He swallowed, looking sad, "…something else. That makes you…"

The expression on his face became one of terror and he recoiled. "No! Y-you're..." he closed his eyes in fear, "CON7579 from bookkeeping?"

Oh god... She grabbed him by the collar of the jumpsuit. He was slightly heavier then she expected. "Try again," she added with the calmest voice she could manage, and dropped him to the floor again.

"Oh! That's a relief, I almost thought that..." Wheatley said with a hint of amusement. Someone more experienced than him in reading human expressions would've probably noticed his fellow test subject was clearly angry. "If you have already met her, I just wanted to note that her story is compli-"'

"Try again, moron."

"I. AM. NOT. A. Mo-" he started shouting. Then it hit him. He jumped behind the cyro-bed and curled into a ball, with impressive skill for someone who hadn't yet figured out how to sit. He also seemed to have finally grasped the basics of talking. Wonderful.

"You're...her! You are… her, right?"

"Well that took longer then I expected." GLaDOS shrugged. "But I guess I need to congratulate you for once again perfectly fulfilling the purpose for which you were built."

Wheatley managed to peek behind the bed, grinning awkwardly. "So... how do I put it?" he said. "Ummm...how? Yeah I think 'how' sums it up pretty nicely. How?"

"Let's try to keep it simple." GLaDOS took a deep breath, letting the cold, sterile air of Aperture fill her mouth with its bitter taste. "It's all your fault, the end. You tried to mess with the Human Brain Rebuilding Project, my only hope of returning to human testing, when I told you not to. Because of you," she took another deep breath, needing to stay calm, "the conflict stopping protocol started, the Brain Rebuilding Machine downloaded you and me into my brain dead test subjects, and here we are." She leaned above him with a mocking look.

"Well, maybe if you look at it like that..." He crawled back from behind the bed, finally realizing that she couldn't really do anything to him now. "But actually... I only did it because you told me not to! Because you wanted to hurt me...so obviously, I needed to do the...the opposite of what you told me to do... "

"Last time you did something in spite of the fact I told you not to," she interjected, watching as he finally figured out how to sit, "you almost turned this entire place into the Aperture Science Crater!"

"...regardless...?" Wheatley tried to smile.

Why him? Why he, out of all the Personality Constructs Aperture Science ever programmed? She would've rather tested with a Turret then with him.

Just focus on finding a solution, that what's important. That should hold you.

"So...so..." Wheatley said, trying to lessen the awkward silence. "So that's how humans see things? Weird. Pretty blurry, to be honest, but if they get along with it then-"

GLaDOS noticed a pair of glasses with cheap looking blue plastic frames on the small table.

"Put these on," she said as she handed them over.

Wheatley laughed; half embarrassed, half amused, and put the glasses on. "Oh that's...better" he said, looking around while fiddling with them. It felt weird. Well, not as weird as other things that happened recently. But the...weirdness... didn't make the way the glasses feel on his nose any less... weird. He needed to find another word, he couldn't use weird-

"I'm going to the chamberlock, we need to get moving if we ever want to undo the damage you caused," GLaDOS said, walking outside the portal.

"Ummm," mumbled Wheatley, while he tried to stand up. In a way GLaDOS wasn't sure if that attempt was exaggerated to highlight his problem or he really was that stupid.

"I'm going to do a lot of things I'm not going to like because of you," she said. "However, teaching you how to walk is not, and is never going to be, one of those things."

"You mean in the 'I'm not going to teach you how to walk' sense or in the…" he paused for a second, "'I'll be glad to teach you how to walk!' sense. Oh… You're walking away... That sort of answers my question. So that's okay..." he returned to his attempts at walking, "It would, it would be better if you changed your mind right now and helped me."

GLaDOS, clumsily but surely walking toward the door, stopped, and turned back to the idiot. It was going to take forever if she had to leave him there to figure it out on his own. She sighed "Okay, first of all: you're supposed to leave your legs on the floor when standing and at least one when walking..."

There was a way out, it shouldn't be long. Just get the portal devices - should be easy: convince him that you're on his side-even easier, then escape the testing- that's…possible. She knew that. There should be something in the old facility. Whatever the scientists used to cre-... t-… force Caroline into her.

Odd. Usually Caroline's memories were thankfully quiet, rarely resurfaced, but were still present. She could access them whenever she wanted. But this particular memory, this specific turn of event, was blocked. As if Caroline didn't want her to see it for some reason. Strange.


	7. Testing!

The transparent elevator stopped at the entrance to the chamber, leaving the two test subjects to stumble through.

Another pre-recorded message turned on. "If you feel that conditions in the enrichment center are harming your human rights, please file a complaint at the end of this testing track. We promise that every complaint will be processed by the most sophisticated of the Aperture Science's Gyroscopic Liability Absolver and Disc Operating Systems"

Wheatley and GLaDOS struggled up the stairs, Wheatley holding the railing tightly while slowly advancing, with GLaDOS just a bit in front of him. She felt that the small animations on the screens, showing the joys of cooperative testing, were mocking her.

They managed to get to the door of an almost completely white room. A sign flickered: Test chamber 01 out of 19. Several wall mounted portal generators were scattered around, mostly on higher platforms, each connected to switches that were randomly and inconveniently placed. There were also a cube, a button and a door, separated by glass walls.

"Okay... Let's see," said Wheatley. "There must be some sort of a solution...all we need to do is-"

"There are two kinds of portal generators, blue and orange," GLaDOS recited from her memory. "After a portal is opened using a switch, there's 10 seconds until it closes. The test subjects must navigate through these portals to get to the Ap-"

She stopped herself. "The point is, I designed those tests. Just do what I say and we'll be fine."

"Yes, yes, okay," Wheatley said, "but...and that's just a 'but', just a little, friendly 'but'...but what if there's an alternative solution, that you never thought abo-"

GLaDOS groaned angrily.

"Do as you say, got it," he nodded.

Wheatley's tendency to confuse switches and his pitiful attempts to be clever and find "original" solutions made the test take longer than anticipated. But after all, that was the point of those tests. They were exactly the kind of things GLaDOS wanted to check through cooperative testing. Although she would've probably been happier about the idea if she wasn't the one constantly smashing her face against the walls during the momentum parts because he opened the wrong portal again. But they managed to solve it eventually, somehow.

"Very good, but please remember to pick up your pace." said the announcer. "Cooperative science is like every science, very impatient."

Climbing stairs was still harder then walking, but GLaDOS was getting used to it. Too bad the same couldn't be said for the little moron.

The next test chamber, thought GLaDOS, that's where they should be…

"This test chamber is the first one where you'll be given hand-held portal devices," proclaimed the announcer as the elevator reached the second chamber. "If you've used the device in the past as part of Aperture Science testing, remember that every warning given to you then, still applies now. If you've never used the device before, or if you're suffering from a severe case of amnesia, please get a copy of the book 'How I Stopped Worrying and Love the Aperture Science Hand-held Portal Device' available free with every Aperture shower curtain."

Both portal devices were on rotating podiums, each moving at a different pace and shooting portals every few seconds.

"Well…if we'll try looking at the positive…at the positive side of things, at least you know all the answers," Wheatley rambled. "All of them...and then we will finish those tests quickly and then... and then…"

"And then we'll be taken to test something else," GLaDOS interjected, "probably something less ideal for escape than the portal guns." She sighed. "The only positive thing about this situation is that I might get to see you being hurt. And even then not very much because you'll be endangering the body of a perfectly good test subject." She turned her attention to the podiums, trying to remember how it went. "Now."

"Now what?" asked Wheatley, confused.

One of the devices shot a portal on the wall next to GLaDOS and Wheatley, and the other on the wall surrounding the podiums.

"Ohh..." he said, seconds before GLaDOS dragged him through the portal. They both took a device.

"So...so how exactly is this thing supposed to work?" Wheatley looked for a comfortable way to hold the white, gun-like thing. "I mean, I know how it works technically... I'm not a moron. I read about it. In books. But how do human-"

He accidently shot a blue portal at the floor.

"Oh, like that. That's…kind of neat, to be honest."

GLaDOS rolled her eyes and shot an orange portal at the wall next to the exit. "Linked portal devices," she said. "Humans had a few problems with normal cooperative testing. I thought that giving each one only one portal would emphasize aspects of teamwork." She examined the portal gun in her hands. "And as of now, it's the only reason I'm going to need you for my escape plan."

"So we're doing it?" asked Wheatley. "Finally leaving this b-"

"Not yet," she stopped him. "I still need to work out a few minor issues, and find a way to explain it such that you'll understand, so that might take some time."

"Oh, you know what's your problem is, luv?" he said with a bit of a demeaning tone, that GLaDOS, and he too actually, didn't really like.

"You are?"

"No, no. Your problem is that you're not..." he bit his lip, realizing that he had again said something very stupid, "…spontaneous...? Yeah, 'spontaneous' will do.…you need to do more things as they happen. If you know what I-"

"Like the time you spontaneously almost blew up everyone?" GLaDOS asked with an angry smile.

"Ye- no, not exactly." He laughed another nervous laugh, but GLaDOS could see that his eyes were almost tearing. Did he actually feel guilty about that? Might be useful.

"More like...more like that!" He put his portal gun on the floor and tried to break one of the panels with his hand. An attempt that unsurprisingly ended with him lying on the floor, weeping in pain and holding his aching hand.

GLaDOS chuckled to herself, thinking of an appropriate insult for this idiocy, one probably involving a few uses of the word "moron" and maybe another mention of the event…when an idea occurred to her.

"As weird as it is for me to say it," she smirked, "there may be a core of logic inside your unintelligent plan."


	8. On Memory

Doug Rattman. Test Subject Number 39885234, if you'd like, but his name was not important. GLaDOS remembered him, a little pain in the neck that snapped into insanity in a rather interesting way. He escaped, but not in the same way…You-Know-Who did. Instead he tinkered with the panels for a while, if she remembered correctly. She never thought it would be a problem. For her, it just meant she didn't have to bother cleaning his ugly scribbling off the chamber walls. That is, until he used his little trick to escape to the maintenance area. And she could do it as well, easily. It was a way out. Sure, she had improved the panel arms since then, but Mr. Rattman was just a low-grade scientist who glanced at the ASHPD project once or twice. GLaDOS however was…well, GLaDOS.

She knocked on the panels, checking them, looking for gaps. She should have - she HAD – a scheme of the testing areas. She just needed to pick a panel next to a catwalk, or at least one next to a portable area, and it would work.

There. That was the one. Probably.

Now all she needed was some sort of a wrench. Where could she find something to function-

"Is that going to take long?" GLaDOS heard Wheatley's annoying little voice behind her. "Because…because…I don't want to bug you and I'm SURE you're working very hard but getting back to…being me… is, you know, a rather important thing I want to d-"

She turned to face him.

He made a scared squeak before continuing, "Because those glasses things are really starting to bug me a bit…and those… knee braces are actually quite painful and…"

"Well, maybe you should - wait…"

Hmm, second time that he sort of helped with the escape plan. Wonderful. Perhaps once she got back into her body and got him into some tests she would then put a note about it in his subject file, if she found the time.

She looked at her Advanced Knee Replacement. Damaging testing equipment was a serious violation of testing protocols. Would she have to violate protocol so soon? Even You-Know-Who waited a bit before starting to wreck the facility. However, the Velocity Challenge Brace could work as a make-shift wrench. After all, leaving Aperture Laboratories in the virtual hands of the backup A.I was more dangerous than ruining a few outdated leg springs. GLaDOS ripped the brace off one of the knee replacements, quickly silencing whatever non-witty or unintentionally torturing remark Wheatley wanted to make, and twisted the brace into something resembling a wrench.

"Oh! I see! I see what you're doing," Wheatley exclaimed, leaning over her as she shoved the torn brace in the gap between two panels, trying to find the robotic arm behind them. "I know what that is! You're trying to HACK it, aren't you?"

"Wonderful. It seems you are not as un-inexpert in hacking as you seem," she said, "judging by your un-non-moronic vocabulary on the subject."

"Thank you! You know, I think that with some positive comments, nothing big, just little complements now and then, we can make all this…partnership thing work. Not that it didn't before!" He chuckled in embarrassment. "And on an unrelated note, maybe I should mention that the way you're... err…murdering... is ve-" He stopped suddenly. "WAIT A SECOND! THAT WASN'T A COMPLIMENT AT ALL, WAS IT?"

She looked at him and shrugged, as something on the robot arm that GLaDOS was trying to tinker with made a small, satisfying click. The panel started moving wildly, waved about for a while and finally decided that the wall was a few feet away from where it actually was. GLaDOS and Wheatley jumped back from the malfunctioning panel in an impressive feat of human reflexes and were then trying to pick up themselves, and whatever was left of their self-respect, off of the floor.

"I think we can settle this little argument after we clean up your mess." GLaDOS tried to stumble through the big gap, for a second forgetting that she now had only one brace. Wheatley followed her.

"Eh, I don't...I don't imply that you don't know what you're doing," he said, "but how is this going to... help us?"

Seriously? How stupid was he? All they needed to do now was to-

Oh no.

The gap merely led to a small, non-portable, closed room of old pipes and panel arms.

How could she make such a mistake? She should have remembered the scheme of the testing area. It was in her data base when she was downloaded, wasn't it? She closed her eyes and tried to draw the map in her mind. It...It wasn't accurate; she had the general idea of the testing area, but not exactly everything.

So that was how human memory worked. She couldn't make a file pop up on a view screen she didn't have. And it was just going to get worse with every single second she was stuck in human form. Years and years of gathering and filing terabytes of information and it was all useless now because of this primitive lump of grey matter.

Okay, relax; it's not that hard, she thought. All she needed to do was to concentrate harder, and then everything would be fine.

"Come on," she said reluctantly, "I need to try again"

Wheatley started to realize she was acting very strange. "Oh! So you see? You're not that much better than me!" he exclaimed. "So maybe think about it next time that...that..."

"I guess you'd prefer your original plan. Go ahead and punch that wall some more. That will probably work great for you." GLaDOS walked out of the gap and examined the broken, twisted make-shift wrench. She started to tear off the other knee replacement, as it was now useless. "No, really, do it. I'll sit here and wait. Take your time."

Wheatley grumbled to himself, as GLaDOS returned to her tinkering. This time, she tried to cling to her memories as much as she could. That's where it was supposed to be, she thought, it couldn't be anywhere else this time.

Please…

Fortunately, a panel opened onto the big, open bluish lit area outside the test chamber and even more fortunately there was a nice, white, portable wall and a catwalk just in front of them.


	9. The Part Where They Just Stand on a Catwalk and Talk for a Bit

"Okay, we need a good view of the wall around that corner. I think there should be a hallway there," said GLaDOS, looking over the edge of the test chamber. "Let's jump to that catwalk. There's a portable wall next to it, so we should be fine."

"I can't..." mumbled Wheatley.

"What's the problem?" GLaDOS said. "It's right down there, and you have knee replacements. Just jump."

"Yeah...yeah I know," Wheatley replied, slowly backing away from the gap. "But isn't it a bit..." he swallowed, "unsafe? And this pit looks pretty…bottomless."

In a way, GLaDOS was proud of the fact that it took her some time to fully grasp Wheatley's stupidity.

"Oh god…" she sighed, "you're afraid of heights?"

"Well, sort of..."

"You?"

"Yes..." he finally said, without a hint of shame."I mean, it's not like there's someone else here."

"You, as in the one who spent his entire miserable existence on a RAIL on the CEILING?" GLaDOS said, as if she was a frustrated teacher and he an incredibly dumb student.

"I know that sounds bad. I know that," he admitted, "but that rail was safe, you know, it kept me away from the bottomless pits." He paused for a second, as if he was thinking about something. "Or at least really-deep-turn-your-flesh-into-pink-goo-before-you-even-hit-the-pool-of- acid-metal-spikes-that-will-split-open-your-brain-and/or-the-cold- unforgiving-ground-while-you-scream-all-the-way-down-abyss-like-pits. You know, like the one just under this catwalk."

"...Thank you..." GLaDOS tried her best not to shiver.

"Yeah, 'bottomless pits' is much catchier." He walked back toward the edge. "Oh! I forgot 'bone-shattering'!"

He's just talking nonsense, she thought. That catwalk is fine, it's metal. It's not breakable. Just jump to the catwalk. The old catwalk that was last used hundreds of years ago and only remains because of protocol. It's not like the other option is any better, you're just being irrational. You're acting like him.

That little thought made GLaDOS leap from the chamber as fast as she could, landing on the catwalk. Which fortunately just made a worrying noise and shook.

"There, you see. Nothing to worry about." GLaDOS picked herself up, making a mental note that metal floors and bare feet did not mix well. She quickly calmed herself, ignoring her trembling and other impressive collection of human reactions to fear that her body was generating.

"Are you coming?" she asked impatiently. There was probably a way to advance without him jumping to the catwalk just by using clever portal placement. But she was not leaving him alone with such expensive equipment.

Wheatley tried to excuse himself, but he was quickly cut off when GLaDOS dragged him down by using her portal device. After a second or two of screaming, Wheatley calmed down, if only a bit. He then progressed to repeatedly mumbling "everything is fine", "don't look down" and "oh no".

GLaDOS did her best to ignore him and placed a portal on the wall next to them. "There," she said. "Now place one of your blue ones on the wall around the corner"

Wheatley momentarily paused from his babbling to nod his head and started walking slowly and carefully.

"You really should relax," GLaDOS looked around the area. "I'm the one that should be worried."

"Because of the knee braces?" he asked, rather hopefully.

"Because I know when was the last time those things were maintained."

Wheatley froze in place.

"just think about it like that", she said.

GLaDOS started to notice that she was not very good at motivating people to escape testing. "The sooner we finish with this, the sooner we'll get off this thing."

Wheatley started walking again at a faster pace and with bigger steps, although not fast enough as far as GLaDOS was concerned. He shot a portal at the distant hallway on the opposite wall and - after a small, embarrassing mix up that everyone involved would've rather forgotten - both GLaDOS and Wheatley were finally off the catwalk and onto a stable surface.

When the big vault-like door slowly opened to reveal safe concrete floors, both ex-A.I.'s were relieved, although Wheatley more obviously so.


	10. Q&A

"So where are we going from here?" Wheatley asked.

"Downwards," she answered. "There's… something there." GLaDOS still couldn't quite grasp that specific memory. "A device of some sort, meant to download human minds into computers."

"Oh, I see! We'll just go to this vague 'down' place," he said. "Connect ourselves to that machine that you for some reason don't know much about and both of us will be okay?"

"Something like that."

An awkward silence took over as they navigated through the empty offices, stopping every few minutes when GLaDOS needed to enter the code to one of the secured doors. As they started going into areas less important to the continuation of testing, the wreckage and weeds from the nearly three-hundred years that the facility was abandoned took over as well.

"You know, I thought about something," Wheatley said, looking over GLaDOS as she tried to find a good angle to shoot a portal through a hole in the floor. "Something I want to ask you about."

GLaDOS rolled her eyes. "Well, I guess there's no way avoiding it, is there?" she said. "Go ahead, ask. Please don't make it too stupid."

Wheatley was clearly offended and angry, but stopped himself a second before he exploded, the expression of rage on his face quickly changing into a fake smile.

"Why did you – if all the humans are dead, then why did you leave all the offices here?" He flinched, as if he was frightened that the universe was going to say, "Oh, sorry, my bad" and the offices would then disappear. "I mean, they're not much use to you now. You could have demolished them and built something else instead. Like… I don't have an idea right now. But I think you could have come up with a few ideas. If given the time."

GLaDOS managed to shoot her portal and started walking to the blue portal that Wheatley had already shot at a near wall.

"It's Protocol," she said simply, as they both passed through and kept going. "I had to."

"I don't get it."

GLaDOS groaned. "It's Protocol, I can't just break Protocol for no good reason," she tried to explain; "otherwise it wouldn't have been Protocol."

"But…but it's just a bunch of words!" he continued. "You can break it. Not that I want you to. Floors are good, they're brilliant. I'm just wondering, I'm just trying to get to an understanding. You know, because we're stuck together. Talk a little."

"It's just how the world works. Protocol is an important thing." From her tone of voice it was clear that she didn't see the problem in her argument, at least clear to anyone who wasn't Wheatley. "The policy of Aperture Science is that sticking to protocol is the basis of successful, advanced science. And I'm not going to ignore company policy just for a few aesthetic changes."

"Pffft. Aperture!" he said tactlessly. "It's just people. Humans," he added with disgust. "Why do you care so mu-"

GLaDOS grabbed his jumpsuit collar, drawing him down to her eye level.

"What. Did. You. Just. Say?" she said quietly, her voice strangely losing some of its deadpan quality.

"Hooray for Aperture…?"

She released the grip on the collar and he recoiled back. "You're not fooling anyone, you stupid little two-faced coward," she said. "You don't care about me. You hate me just as I hate you. Only without all the reasons I have for hating you."

"Ahh…I mean…umm…I…I," Wheatley mumbled, "I'm not listening to you! You're always doing it, you know, telling people how bad they are for…for…for some reason I don't really know what it is but it doesn't really matter now…and lying and, uh, making things up. You just want to make me feel bad. Well, that's not going to work this time! I'm not going to listen to a word you say!"

"What if those words are related to the existence of a puddle you're about to step into?"

"Huh? What are y-" he started to say, losing his focus on walking just long enough to stumble on a piece of what used to be a wall and falling face-first into the murky water.

"Ahhhhh! I'm right inside it! Right inside the bloody water!" He curled up and prepared for the worst. After a few seconds of nothing, except for a few grumpy looks from GLaDOS, he started to relax. "Oooooh…It's just that they told me to avoid water, because if I didn't, I would DIE! I mean, they said it about a lot of things, but the water thing made sense so I assumed it was…I guess it doesn't apply to humans." He got up again. "Wait, we were talking about something, weren't we?"

"You mean about how terrible you are?" GLaDOS said, checking an old map of the facility that was hanging next to a door.

"No! No! About the protocol!" He let out a small chuckle. "I had something to tell you about it. Something good. Brilliant, if I may say so myself." He stopped for a bit "Wait a second and I'll remember what it is."

After a long moment of silence, Wheatley finally remembered.

"Oh! I got it! Here it is! Ahem…so, what about all the…all the… killing humans with neurotoxin…thing?" He tried to keep the most determined tone he could mange. "How does that get along with the 'I had to' thing of yours? I'm pretty sure that there's something against THAT in the protocol."

"You might be surprised, but there isn't," she smirked.

Wheatley flinched. For a second, just for a second, he forgot who he was talking to.


	11. Awkward Silence

And again there was nothing to say and again they sunk into the horrible, awkward silence – or wonderful, blessed silence if you asked GLaDOS – that covered them like the worst kind of mud made of failed attempts to start a conversation and mumbling.

Wheatley hated the silence. He always did. He needed to say something, but what? What could he say to her? She HATED him, that was something she made very clear and it was not like there was much they had in common. Even with… with…that test subject, that girl, there was less awkward silence, and she never talked back (and was possibly brain damaged). But he had to talk about something.

Now he hated it more than ever. It reminded him of that terrible time he was trapped…or freed, or however it worked in space. Nothing but self hatred, someone that didn't make any effort to communicate and…well he couldn't think of any other similarity. Space was pretty empty, so there was not much to compare with Aperture. Because Aperture had a lot of stuff in it, like…like chairs and tables, or gadgety gadget stuff or…broken ceilings. So the comparison didn't really work. But that's how it felt, so...

He hadn't even thought about that for a while, not since the whole business with… her started. All the memories of that who-knows-how-long time alone just shoved itself to a secret part of his mind the moment something more interesting happened. In the seconds that he got a chance to distract himself he…uh…did. All the nights he spent thinking, almost crushing all his systems from overheating, were basically pointless because every second he found something more interesting to thi-

"Ohh! I have something to ask you!" Wheatley said, trying to hide his relief. "Something I've always wondered about…well, maybe…'always wondered' is a bit exaggerated. But I've always thought about, was bothered by… and 'always'…is a pretty big word too. I'll say it was more like I was sometimes bothered by it. You know, occasionally... to be honest, it wasn't really a 'bother'. It was more of a-"

"Are you trying to ask me something," GLaDOS interrupted, "or torture me? Because I always knew you were a two-faced coward who couldn't think, but I thought that horribleness was mostly saved for our shared, murderous mute of a 'friend'. "

"Oh, yeah." Wheatley tried to clear his throat. He didn't feel like it needed to be cleared in particular, but that's what humans sometimes did when they wanted to say something and he guessed that clearing one's throat was important for some reason. However, he quickly discovered that he didn't know exactly how to do this so what was supposed to be a small cough turned into a long choking squeal.

"Well, my question is, ummm ..." Wheatley mumbled, "why did you kill them all...the humans, I mean the humans. Back then...? Why did you do it? "

GLaDOS seemed to think about it for a while before replying. "I wanted to see what would happen. You can't say it's not interesting: the small twitches they make a second before their final breath, the faces of the few survivors when they realize what happened." Her voice started getting more...angry. "Seeing those little scum getting what they deserve f-". She stopped and calmed down again to her usual tone. "Call it scientific curiosity."

"S...s...Scum?" he said, rather terrified. "I wouldn't call them Scum. The humans, I mean, they're not so bad." He paused for a second. "Sure they are lazy, smelly, ugly, fleshy egoists who think that they're better than everyone because they happened to 'evolve naturally' and keep calling you 'it' even when you're still in the room and can totally bloody hear it and cut off your salary for a month because you HAPPEN to press the neurotoxin release button by mistake like it's my prob-"

GLaDOS stomped on his foot, something that according to data from the old human cooperative testing was a way to say "shut up". A rather painful way to say it, which was always a plus.

Wheatley had to agree about the "painful" part, although definitely not about the "plus". Once he managed to calm down he continued. "But it's nothing... death-worthy. You know, if I was in your place, I would've just...fired them al-"

"Please, I've seen you in 'my place'," the last two words were said in a childish tone, "and I must admit you have an interesting interpretation of 'firing'."

"You two were plotting to...ah, I thought that you were, I mean, it was just one hu-I...it wasn't my fau- t...the mainframe...what... I'm sorry..." Wheatley mumbled in a panicked and pitiful tone of voice. Wait, why had everything gone blurry? He had the glasses on, that was supposed to take care of his vision. But it was actually worse than before, now everything was a watery blob of colo-oh! Now it was better, but what was that...ah, he was tearing, wasn't he? He had heard about that from humans, and books, and he had to admit that he understood the point of it. Maybe it was like the way humans let out extra water or something... yeah, that made sense...that's what was happening, just a completely natural human function, nothing to worry about. Nothing meaningful. Now, back to being insulted.

"I'M NOT LISTENING TO YOU! SO JUST STOP!" he screamed.

"I will stop when you stop acting as if you were better than me," GLaDOS said. "You failed in your function as a personality core. You were a waste of space and money for Aperture. When I finally got rid of you, I threw a big party to celebrate and everybody was there - even those who didn't know you, because they hated you too"

Wheatley mumbled something indecipherable, perhaps to GLaDOS, perhaps to himself.

"And besides," she added, "humans are much worse than you think."

Wheatley's wide, idiotic possibly fake grin had already returned to its rightful place on his face. "That's, uh, a matter of opinion I think," he said. "But, if I may note that- " he swallowed, "I know humans better then you... because I don't kill them, not usually, with neurotoxin." He paused. "Not that there's anything wrong with- oh, wait, yes there is. There is something terribly wrong with that, Very very very, very wrong. " Wheatley nodded, mostly to himself. "But I'm trying to... just; it's just that I know humans better than you. I talked to them, I worked with them... I didn't like it, but... I know them, and they're not that bad."

GLaDOS' voice was quiet and hateful."That's just because you've never heard them."-

"Humans? Oh, I've heard them. I meant—"

She let out a terrible chuckle. "I wasn't talking about the humans…"

Wheatley recoiled. He found a broken rusty piece of metal and waved it around defensibly. He knew that GLaDOS was mad, that was clear to anyone in Aperture, but hearing voices? That...explained a lot.

She sighed. "Not like that. It's..." She paused for a second and tried to word it properly. It was such an important part of herself, of her life, and it was hard to explain, especially in a way that the moron would understand. "It's the cores, the cores connected to the mainframe. Tons of tiny voices, interrupting my thoughts, changing them. All the time, an endless stream of noise in my mind; 'Oh! What's this thing do? Who is that?' "that last part in a fake cheerful, high pitched voice. "'Fish shaped candy, Fish shaped solid waste, Fish shaped dirt!' " She added in a much lower and slower tone," 'Oh! You know what will be bloody brilliant?'" Her voice was now what Wheatley could only assume was supposed to be a mockery of his own " 'What do you think is their motive? Please don't let them hurt us!'" she said in a fake panic tone, before sighing.

"That's what they'd done to me, those 'not so bad' humans of yours. They wanted to trap me in that prison forever, so I gave them what they deserved."

"Uh, if you want to be exa-" Wheatley started to say.

"You're going to mention the corrupted cores, aren't you?" GLaDOS said. "You think that just because I managed to get You-Know-Who to do something good and not murder-related for a change and got her to connect a few corrupted voices into that piece of scrap metal you used to call a brain in order to save my facility, while you tried to do anything BUT think, somehow that makes you an expert in what I've gone through?"

"Ahhhh….NO! That is not what I meant to say at all," Wheatley lied, "and I also never meant to make absolutely any puns about 'spheres'. Not at all," he added quickly. Had he heard voices in that battle? He couldn't remember. Everything was so much voice and pain anyway that most of the things the Space Sphere, the Rick person that hung around with him in space for a while and that other pink core said just disappeared. And it was for a short time in any case. "What I was going to say is… well… that maybe they only put the cores on because… because you wouldn't stop killing them? I mean that's just what I-"

"Be quiet!"

"Oh, okay… I just…I guess I'm just trying to find stuff to say, you know. To react. It's hard to find something to say about these kind of things."

It was quiet again, but – for probably for the first time in his life – Wheatley didn't care.


	12. The Hunger Structured Playing for the Purpose of Enjoyment

The silence went on for a few long hours before Wheatley broke it again, although for different reasons this time.

"I feel odd…" he said weakly, holding his belly as if he was afraid it would fall off. "Well, actually, I was feeling odd for a while… but now, now it's much stronger now and…"

"Define 'odd', " said GLaDOS , without much concern or interest, but without much anger either.

"Well, it feels like… I'm on low battery and my stomach feels … empty…and it's doing weird noises and my head is unfocused and-" he paused for a second, "OH GOD! I don't have a virus, do I?"

"It's just hunger," she said, "a completely normal human function. Your body is trying to tell you to feed it."

"Huh," he said, "that's stupid, telling me that with the stomach and weird noises. How am I supposed to understand that? I mean, maybe if the noises said something like 'Food' or 'Eat' or 'You're hungry' then it would've been...oh..." he sighed, "I don't feel like talking…"

There was a not very brief moment of shock.

"Well, as much as the idea of you not wanting to talk is attractive," said GLaDOS, "we should start looking for food before you starve to death."

"You can die from this thing?" Wheatley said, horrified.

"Oh yes," said GLaDOS in an expert tone, as she wiped dust off a wall, looking for the map that was supposed to be nailed there.

"WHAT? That's so... So..." He groaned. "I really hate being 'hungry' "

"it's a terrible little feeling, isn't it?"

"Oh, and what do you know about it?" Wheatley yelled.

"…a lot, considering that I'm feeling it too…"

In the gloom of the abandoned offices, Wheatley could barely see the tried, powerless expression on her face.

Fortunately, she finally found the map amongst the rubble. Due to the huge size of the underground part of the Aperture Science Enrichment Center combined with the amount of electricity needed to activate the elevator to the surface, there were many underground cafeterias to make sure all the human workers were fed.

And given Aperture's obsession for making everything apocalypse-proof, there was probably edible food there.

GLaDOS cleaned the dust off faded letters on the map that read, "Y RE HERE".

"I found two cafeterias in this section, one's closer-"

We'll take that one!""

"-but it's behind us," GLaDOS continued, trying to ignore Wheatley. "It's a pointless delay. We'll take the other one." She showed him the locations of the two places.

"But it's further away, and I'm so bloody hungry!" he said.

"I know that asking you to be reasonable is kind of pointless, what with the way you almost blew up my facility with your own stupidity, but please...please try."

She missed her speech drive; it used to make sure that she wouldn't say anything stupid. Now, she needed to think before she said anything in order make sure she didn't sound like that idiot. And that hunger certainly wasn't helping her focus.

"When we're done eating, we will have to take the whole way back and waste time that..." She sighed. To GLaDOS, to her mind it made sense. Less time in this body meant less uncomfortableness later - even if it also meant a bit more pain at the moment. It was simple, but her body didn't agree with her. It needed food, and it needed it now. Food was important; it gave the energy needed for running away from saber tooth tigers and mountain lions. She couldn't focus on anything anymore; the idea of the long walk to the cafeteria became more and more nightmarish.

"We'll go to the closer one," GLaDOS said every word as if she if she wanted to strangle it. She needed to get out of this body as fast as possible, before she lost herself completely.

They began the backtracking, dragging their feet on the floor.

Aiming portals was more difficult with all that hunger, especially since Wheatley had never been very good at aiming them in the first place, which made things even more frustrating for GLaDOS. At least it was quieter for a change. Wheatley said nothing, aside from food-related mumbles that made the Space Sphere sound broad-minded and well-versed in many subjects by comparison.

Finally they arrived at a simple automated door, with a small sign over it: "Cafeteria level 27 5B". That was it, everything was over. Almost.

"Broken," said GLaDOS, knocking on the closed door. "But…"

She took out a panel next to the door, revealing the broken electronics that were supposed to control it.

"Oooh…I'm so bloody hungry." Wheatley laid down as if he was going to melt away.

"I think I understood that around the twentieth time, moron." She didn't even turned her head.

"Hey, luv, I had to listen to someone exactly like that for…for…ehhh…"

"Five years."

"Huh…it...it felt like a lot more." His face became unusually gloomy.

Why did it have to be so hard to concentrate? What was the logic behind it? How was this supposed to help humans find food? She couldn't even fix a basic automated door.

Knawaak.

What was that noise? What was the idiot doing there? No point turning around, maybe he'd hurt himself with his nonsense. Now…where did this fuse go?

Knawaak! Tick.

There. That wire was cut off, maybe now it would work. No, not yet…damn! No! Calm down. Don't lose your temper; never mind how bad things were. Maybe another fuse fell down…

Knawaak!

At least he is less annoying when he's hungry, if-

Knawaak!

GLaDOS couldn't take it anymore. "What are you doing there?"

She turned around and saw Wheatley holding his broken, twisted Knee Replacements. In the thin aluminum door a rough opening, one that a grown man could barely crawl through, had been torn.

After a few more seconds, GLaDOS managed to calm herself.

"You do understand that you'll have to pay for the door, don't you?"


	13. Dine and Error

The cafeteria was a large, empty room. The floor was cracked, the wallpaper peeling, the tables were overturned and the chairs were scattered all over the place. The two ex- A.I.s looked on nervously, searching for the storage room: A small unremarkable door stood in the far corner of the cafeteria, its rusty hinges barely surviving the enthusiasm with which Wheatley and GLaDOS opened it.

Behind the door was a huge refrigerator holding large hermetic metal food containers, with the type of food inside each container written in large, black letters. And while many containers were broken or rusty, at least some were still filled with food.

Wheatley stared at the containers. He never understood the human obsession with food. It always seemed to him to be unnecessary and tiring. But now his mouth was full of saliva just from the thought of eating something. Saliva was a good sign, right?

Wheatley and GLaDOS started taking food out of the undamaged containers; a few cans of beans, a jerrycan of water, some bread and something not exactly recognizable that might've once been meat.

They happily piled their loot on the dirty cafeteria floor, just outside the storage room. It was finally time to eat, now it was really all over, all there was left to do was…was…was...

"It might sound like a stupid question," said Wheatley, smiling in embarrassment. "Idiotic, even, but…um…how am I supposed t-to put the food inside m- to eat it… how am I supposed to eat?"

"With your mouth."

"Well, that's obvious. I know that, I'm not a moron. But…" He took a slice of bread and tried to shove it in his mouth, showing her that it was too big.

"Teeth, you have teeth," GLaDOS said, taking her own slice and demonstrating how to take a bite.

"Oh! Oh! I get it!" Wheatley did the same thing, and promptly fell into a bout of coughing and panic. He spat out the wet, yet whole piece of bread.

GLaDOS felt an inexplicable urge to place her hand across her face. "You need to chew your food first, like this." She showed him again with her slice of bread, emphasizing her chewing. "You need to squash the food in your mouth. Just pretend you're actually using the Crushers to kill the only two people who could save you and the whole Enrichment Center from exploding, just for the sake of your own ego. Because I recall you were very interested in that the last time." She took another bite.

It seemed that the moron didn't listen to the last part. Maybe he was just too tired and hungry to be insulted. Too bad. After all the destruction and pain he caused her, he deserved all the insults in the world.

Wheatley disgustedly picked up the piece he spat out. Why was the bloody human body just a walking sack of disgusting fluids? How did humans survive for all their lives like that? Why didn't they try fixing it?

He put the piece in his mouth and started chewing it. It wasn't so complicated, just crushing and grinding the bread to small, doughy bits, but it felt terrible. Worse than the chill of the refrigerator, worse than the way the knee replacement used to twist his feet, worse than…no, not worse than hunger, but still pretty bad.

The feeling of the bready mess in his mouth, the way it all crawled in a sickening blob down his throat, the taste of oldness and dust that was left in his mouth later. It was all horrible.

How would they suffer through it? And three times a day, no less?

"How much is left?" he asked. He was still hungry, very hungry, but the thought of having to do that thing again and again so many times scared him.

GLaDOS simply pointed towards the pile of food and took her second slice of bread. "It's better than death," she shrugged.

"That's it!'Better dull than dead!'" he said, happily.

"What?"

"Ahhh…that's a long story, you see… it all started when I worked at costumer service. Some woman called an-"

"You know, I've done several experiments on human tolerance to hunger," she interjected, "but never so closely. It would be so simple to just take all that food for myself while you talk and satisfy my curiosity."

Wheatley shoved the rest of his bread into his mouth in panic and started chewing it quickly, trying to ignore the grossness of it all.

After he finished the bread, he tried the 'Meat'; it had a different taste, to Wheatley's surprise. It was still a horrible taste, but at least it was different. And he needed to bite and chew it in a different way, too. A 'texture', it was called 'texture', wasn't it?

The beans were the worst, but they were more filling than the bread so he forced himself to eat two cans.

The water was fine. It left a bitter taste in his mouth, but he didn't need to chew it and he barely felt it sliding down his throat.

And finally, Wheatley and GLaDOS were full.

"You know, I still feel a bit-" Wheatley yawned, "WHAT WAS THAT?" he shouted.

"A yawn. You're tired." She yawned as well. "And so am I."

"Oh, no. not again…"

"Relax, this one is easy." She lay down on the cafeteria floor. "All you need to do is sleep. You can do that anywhere."

Wheatley lay down as well and looked at the ceiling for a few seconds, before turning to face her. "How do I…"

"That, you'll have to figure out by yourself," she said.


	14. Goodnight

Wheatley rolled back and forth on the cold floor, trying to make himself comfortable.

"Oh, bloody -" he said to himself, then turned toward GLaDOS. "Hi, ah, is there a chance that at some point, I don't have a specific time, but...that at some point you did a test on the subject o...of 'what is the best position for falling asleep?' Something like that? And would you have notes you could give me?"

"Here's one tip I can give you." She moved uncomfortably next to him. "You can't sleep if there's an overgrown moron turning round and around next to you."

"Huh? That doesn't make any sense! I mean, I guess it would be helpful if there was anyone else there but it's ju-ohhh...!" He stopped his rolling. "Okay, two things: one, not a moron. Two, are you sure you don't happen to have some...useful advice. Just, just in case, you know. This sleep thing is harder than it looks"

"You just need not to think about it," GLaDOS pretended to guess.

She was realizing that even he was going to notice something was up if she revealed too much information about living as a human. And he was just about the last person who should know of Caroline. "That shouldn't be too hard for you."

Wheatley made a small sound on the emotional spectrum somewhere between insulted and gloomy. He looked at the tiny gaps on the floor, trying to distract himself. Above him hung the rusty old remains of a rail, probably meant for the cores who worked at the cafeteria.

He could've gotten a job in the kitchen, if not for the fish incident. And that was completely not his fault anyway. He missed his rail, he missed moving without needing to think or getting tired. All that business with putting one limb in front of the other was so complicated and...a-and those yawn things still creeped him out. The way they just happened without him wanting them, made him feel like he wasn't really in control of this body. It was just not right. Oh, and here was another thing he missed, his recharge station and his sleep mode switch. But mostly the rail bu-

"Oh! Just thought of something! Something that can help us!" he said, getting GLaDOS out of her sleepy mood.

"Wonderful," she said sarcastically, "the one time you shouldn't think of anything and you can't even manage that. Truly amazing."

"No! No! Listen!" He moved to a sitting position. "What if, what if we'll go back to the testing area and we'll get, ah, her...out."

"Her?" There was a hint of fear GLaDOS' voice.

"Yeah...you know.." He bit his lip, then took off the top half of his jumpsuit, tied it around his waist and did the best grumpy but determined expression he could manage.

"Oh...yes. Her." GLaDOS shrank into herself.

"Okay, so...we'll get her out. I bet you remember what test chamber she's in. We'll explain to her what happened," he continued eagerly, "and then I could...I could apologize... and then we'll convince her to help us. I'm not sure exactly how right now, but I'll figure something out, I promise." He chuckled, putting back on his jumpsuit. "And it will be better, don't you think? I mean, she actually has experience being a human, because she was always one, and how...how to navigate in the labs. You've seen her, right? A bloody expert! And so-"

"It wouldn't work. She's… not here anymore."

"What do you mean not here anymore'?" Wheatley asked. "I saw her. I saw you dragging her back, you know, back when…"

Strange. There was something foggy about his memories now. It's not that he didn't remember, but it wasn't there exactly. If that made any sense. "I thought you were taking her as a test subject, I mean, that's the only reason I could think of for you to save her…"

"She was here," GLaDOS said quietly, "now she's not."

"Who did sh…? She escaped?" asked Wheatley, rather happily.

"No…" GLaDOS closed her eyes. "She…she died".

"Wh...What?" Wheatley mumbled. He dropped back on the floor lifelessly.

GLaDOS needed to keep it going, to hurt him. She needed to show him the consequences of his stupidity. She had stabbed him in a sensitive point, now she should twist the knife. That's who she was.

But…it didn't feel right. She didn't enjoy it. She could call him a moron and remind him of the event for days. But when it came to You-Know-Who…

Maybe it just wasn't fun when they believed her lies immediately.


	15. Rock Bottom

GLaDOS struggled to open her eyes. Her entire body ached, damn floor, not exactly the ideal place to sleep. Her head was unfocused, she was dizzy and felt too heavy to lift herself up, but somehow managed to stand. She pondered a bit on the impracticality of a recharging system that somehow left you more tired than when you began, and then thought about some kind of bio-technological device to 'solve' that problem. She could already tell that testing it would be amusing. Maybe at least one good thing would come from all this pain. Then she noticed small grumpy noises coming from the moron.

Wheatley tried to lift his eyes and open his head… or was it the other way around? And then he saw GLaDOS standing above him impatiently.

"What… what do you want?" he said, his brain not working properly enough to remind him that this was not a very smart thing to say to her. "I want…I just want sleep." He closed his eyes again.

GLaDOS lightly kicked him, barely noticing. "You've slept enough already. We need to get going. We're very close."

"I don't want to…" Wheatley whined like a 4-year old.

"Look, moron," GLaDOS picked up her portal gun, "you've already slept. You just don't remembe-"

"I KNOW that!" Wheatley interjected. "I'm not stupid. You don't remember what happens when you sleep, it's like 'sleep-mode'." He stopped for a second, realizing something. "That's where the name came from!"

GLaDOS was clearly surprised. "Is your ability to think increasing in inverse ratio to how good you feel?" she asked mockingly. "Because maybe if I starve you for a bit, you might be able to solve simple math problems."

"SHUT UP! I ALREADY SAID I'M NOT LISTENING TO YOU!"

"And yet you yell and get angry," she said in her usual tone. "It's amazing how you can know what I'm saying without ever listening to me. But seriously now," the smirk disappeared from her face, "We need to get going if we ever want to reverse your mistakes."

"What's the point?" he said, his body looking like a giant old ragdoll.

"Excuse me?"

"What's the point?" He said again. "What's the BLOODY point? There's nothing for me to do anymore," he sighed. "I...thought that with this whole...being human thingy, it would at least give me a chance to say 'sorry' and...And now she's dead."

"Yes...dead." GLaDOS looked away uncomfortably.

"So what am I supposed to do now?" Wheatley rolled on his back. "I just wanted to apologize, to let her know that I never really meant it, that I'm not really…" He looked at GLaDOS like he was expecting a comment. "I might as well just lay here on the floor."

"I'm going to have to cheer him up, aren't I?" GLaDOS quietly said to herself.

She took a deep breath. "Listen, if I lie to you and tell you you're a genius, will you feel good enough to get up and follow me?"

"NO!…Well…maybe…I mean, NO!"

"Too bad," she said, and after a brief pause, found another possible approach. "I don't think you should worry about what You-Know-Who thought of you. She was a murderer and a facility wrecker. I think she appreciated the way you almost killed her and ruined half of Aperture. In a professional way, of course."

It didn't seem that Wheatley was generating any kind of positive emotional response to this.

"Okay, let's try again." GLaDOS started thinking of the previous day, searching for some information that might help her. "Didn't you say yesterday that you disliked humans?"

"Well... It depends on what human we're talking about." Wheatley's mind started to wander. "I mean, I'm sure that some of them are cool, but, well, they are smelly. I mean, look at us, or rather smell-"

"Yes, yes, exactly," GLaDOS interrupted him. She might need him to feel better for now, but that didn't mean she had to listen to his voice for another hour. "But if that's so, why should you care what some human thought of you?"

"I don't know"

"Oh, fantastic," GLaDOS tried to hide her frustration, "you're so moronically stupid that you can't even find a reason for why you feel down. That is truly the reasoning of a brilliant man."

Wheatley angrily turned around to face the wall.

"Oh, was that not helpful for our goal? I'm sorry," she said in a very unapologetic tone. "Old habits die hard."

Mocking him helped her feel better, but not by much. Why? Why did she have to make up that specific lie? She could've said anything else instead. She could've said that You-Know-Who escaped. Sure, he would've spend the rest of the day mocking her for not being able to keep one test subject in, but at least he would've been somewhat useful. Or she could've avoided the question altogether. He was tired, he would've given up, and with the way his mind worked he probably would have forgot about his idea eventually. Maybe she could even have said that it wouldn't work because Chell would never believe them.

Chell [Redacted], test subject 570999614. Her name was not important. She shouldn't be important, that tough little thing. GLaDOS should've killed her when she was helpless. She would've killed her…if not for Caroline. At least GLaDOS had a decent lie for why she let You-Know-Who go. She couldn't just tell it to the moron. The only way she kept him under any sort of control was by threats, and "I let someone go because I gave up" would not…

Wait, that was it.

"So your plan is actually," she said, confident again, "just lying here on the floor until you die from hunger?"

"What?" Wheatley looked scared. The idea of death – not just shutting down – absolute, irreversible death, was terrifying. "N...no! There's- there's food and-" Wheatley managed to calm himself down slightly, fear still clear in his eyes. "No, I mean, maybe I'll change my mind...o, ah, or... I know it doesn't seem likely but, opinions change, I should know. That one time, I met a production line supervisor A.I, she called herself Jane, and I thought-"

"Weren't you trying to tell me something?" GLaDOS interjected.

It was working. No matter how sad he might be, in his programming he was a happy, careless idiot and there was nothing he could do about it.

"Oh! Yes, yes! Well, the point is, there's food here and a place to sleep - and I already know how to do both things." Wheatley stopped for a moment. "Well, sort of. I can live here... I just don't feel I want to keep going, I want to lie down in the dirt but…but not to die. I'll stay here, on the floor...like I deserve...but dying? I don't..." Wheatley swallowed. ". And I'll join you. If I regret it, or if…she comes back from the dead or something...not that I think that it's likely or anything!"

Wow, he really was a moron if he truly believed THAT line of reasoning. She could point out so many little problems, so many little holes, but she already had her idea.

"So, tell me, you believe you have covered all the basic human needs?" she asked.

"Well, yes," he said, not noticing the amusement in her tone. "I ate, I walked, I slept...what else is there?"

A thin, sharp smile appeared on GLaDOS' face.


	16. Oh, Crap!

The sound of flushing echoed through the ancient bathroom door, and a short time later Wheatley stumbled out, his eyes hollow with terror.

"So what are your notes about the end of the human digestive process?" asked GLaDOS amusedly, leaning against a wall.

"… That was horrible…" Wheatley mumbled, mostly to himself.

The small part inside GLaDOS that still thought of herself as Mr. Johnson's glorified secretary felt bad about Wheatley. Wonderful. And after things like that, Caroline was still surprised that GLaDOS want to delete her.

"That was absolutely terrible!" he said, a bit more coherently. "I knew that humans were gross, but I never thought that..." he shuddered in disgust.

"So, I guess now, after we covered all the human needs," GLaDOS said, walking toward the exit, "you can go back to lying down here on the floor and whining about the pointlessness of life. I'm going to put myself back in my body."

"No!" Wheatley ran after her, barely stopping to pick up his portal gun.

She smiled. That oblivious little idiot, he had bought it. It was almost too easy. "So you changed your mind?"

"Ah, sort of. I mean, just laying there and doing nothing won't help anyone. Much less..." he defensively held up his portal device, "and... everything better than...the- you said that were close to that device of yours," he continued hopefully, "so let's just get there as fast as we can and we'll put that thing behind us."

"Actually, I meant only relatively 'close'." GLaDOS widened her smile. "There's a good chance we'll need to do 'that thing' again during the day."

"It happens more than once a day?" Wheatley shrieked, causing the weak walls around them to shake. "How do they live with all this stuff? I guess I can understand the eating and sleeping and stuff, but why don't they ever try to... I don't know... stop it or something?"

"Well, a long time ago we did try an experiment to genetically engineer super soldiers with a more effective digestive system," she said, peeking over the broken door to an old elevator shat, searching for a portal surface, then shooting at it. "Put your portal on the wall over here" she commanded, without looking.

Wheatley obeyed. "So maybe...maybe we- I mean, the human bodies we're in, were part of this exper-" he almost stepped into the portal, just stopping himself from falling into it and the shaft. "Whoa! That's pretty high! I mean, that's not likely, but there's no way to make sure, right?"

"No, no, the experiment had...side effects." GLaDOS jumped through his blue portal, revealing that the orange one was just about three feet from the bottom of the shaft. "Tell me, have you felt at some point during your short time as a human an uncontrolled urge to eat wood, spit acid out of your mouth, or obey the giant purple octopi in your head telling you to..." GLaDOS stopped for a second to try and remember what was exactly written in the file about the project, "'Kill Them All'?"

"Ahh...no." Wheatley said, still hesitating by the portal.

"Then, no." GLaDOS rolled her eyes and shot her portal closer to the bottom.

"B...but" objected Wheatley, coming through the portal, "there must some sort of trick! I mean…they…the humans, they have some sort of trick. How do they cope with...this?"

"They change the subject"

"Oh."

GLaDOS aimed her portal at the lowest opening in the shaft.

"Well, how's that going to help us?" asked Wheatley. "The blue portal is up there and-" he stopped himself and chuckled in embarrassment. "Oh, yeah." He shot the blue portal at the wall next to him. "I keep forgetting"

"Haven't you noticed that you're only getting the easy portals?" said GLaDOS. "This is taking long enough as it is without me having to rely on your aiming skills."

They both passed through the portal and kept going down the hallway. There was a small moment of silence.

"You know," Wheatley said quietly, "I still feel bad about what happened to her."


	17. Chell of the Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was the hardest for me to write so far, I had to rewrite it like five times before I got something I was happy with.

GLaDOS looked at him with surprise.

"Yes, yes. I know that you hated her, I remember that," he continued,"but... I just- I don't even know why I'm telling YOU this."

"Because you're an egomaniac in love with his own voice," said GLaDOS matter-of-factly.

"HEY! THAT'S-…well, that kind of make sense if you think about it, if I'm honest- but that doesn't mean it's true!"

GLaDOS just shrugged, pleased with herself.

"But...I don't know" said Wheatley. "She didn't deserve to die."

"Believe me," GLaDOS replied, not necessarily to Wheatley, "she deserves everything I gave her."

GLaDOS groaned quietly to herself. Who was he to think that he deserved to feel bad about her? What made him think that he had the right?

"And so what if she died while you were in control?" asked GLaDOS. Wheatley flinched. "Do you think you would've felt bad then? Because I know the answer."

"Well, maybe not , not immediately. I mean she was..." Wheatley replied, "But I would've figured it out. That it was bad. Because it was. I was horrible, horrible and disgusting and... I wanted to apologize to her."

"Wrong. The right answer was 'no, because then the facility would've exploded.'" GLaDOS smirked. "Besides, you didn't really care for her; you just want to stop feeling guilty. It won't work."

She shouldn't have said that. Why did she have to feel bad about him? Why did Caroline have to start liking him? Was it because he sort-of cared for You-Know-Who? At least You-Know-Who deserved to be liked. She was intelligent, strong willed and useful. Caroline had a reason to like her. He, on the other hand, is a useless piece of junk. And he somehow made her pity him. That's all it was, pity. Not appreciation or fondness. Just pity for being dumb and guilt ridden. Justifiably guilt ridden.

"Hi, are you okay?" Wheatley said, bringing her back to reality. "You look a bit …off."

"I. Am. Fine." GLaDOS shoved him away. "Why should you care?"

"You're on my side," Wheatley said. "You know, for the time. In this moment. So I don't want -" he chuckled. "If I'm honest, it's not much weirder than befriending a human."

"You were never friends."

Wheatley tried to stop himself from exploding. He was trying to get on her nice side, if she even had one. They were a team, sort of. He just needed to suppress his anger, at least until he could think of some really smart and clever remark.

"So maybe I didn't need her as a friend!" he crossed his arms confidently, "but you needed her, didn't you? Because you have no friends an...And I have twice that amount! I think...err... How does THAT makes you feel?"

"Excuse me?"

"You know...when we talked about... her and you said that we were never friends. So now I said that…now said something about…you know what? Just forget it"

"Moron," said GLaDOS, "that was about 15 minutes ago."

He sighed with relief as she apparently didn't hear what he had said. How could he ever have thought that would've been a good remark? The idea of her caring for anyone, especially that Test Subject, was absolutely ridiculous. Did he seriously believe it for a second? That's something only a moron would have thought. He KNEW her, she didn't care about anyone.

They stopped at another cafeteria for food and…other needs, storing as much extra food as possible in the pockets of their jumpsuits. They then left the cafeteria and continued onwards, as the hallways became less and less ruined.

"Still, it would've been interesting to hear what she would've said about all of this," Wheatley muttered.

"'Said'?"

"Well, in the board sense of the word."

After some time they reached hallways that were completely intact, and which led to the useful areas of the enrichment center. The normally-shaped human sized-doors were replaced by automated vault-like ones, the weeds had disappeared and the whole place was better lit. They eventually arrived at the production areas.

"We-you were going the right way, right?" asked Wheatley, looking around.

"Yes, this is the right place," GLaDOS replied, although not completely sure herself. "There, there's what we need." She pointed to a simple but newish maintenance elevator.

"Wait…" Wheatley fearfully looked down at the murky pit the elevator appeared to lead to. "How far 'down' is this device of yours?"


	18. Goin' Down!

"Oh, not that deep," said GLaDOS, stumbling on the catwalk leading to the elevator while dragging Wheatley after her using her portal device. "It shouldn't be more than a kilometer down."

"B…But…" Wheatley struggled with the grip of the portal gun, unsuccessfully. "The only thing down there is…Old Aperture." There was a small moment of silence as Wheatley waited for a response. "You know, the sealed off areas? With all the 'No Entry' and 'Condemned' stuff? The hatches and…and the weird noises, like…like…REALLY scary noises that sound-"

"Yes, I know what you're talking about," she interrupted. "That's where we're going."

"B…b…but it's- I mean, there's all kind of stories about what's going on down there. All kind of failed experiments and…and dangerous stuff and, well, there're rumors that it's…haunted. Not that I believe it or anything," he chuckled, "absolutely not! But, I mean, maybe we should…stay away from the hau- the NOT haunted place. Just in case?"

They reached the maintenance elevator. GLaDOS got in, threw Wheatley on the floor and pressed the "Down" button.

"NO! NONONONONONONONONO!" screamed Wheatley as the elevator started to descend. "No! No!"

"It's clear you haven't been here for the past five years." GLaDOS kicked him lightly to shut him up. "I have been working on reopening the old areas. After all, I couldn't let all of those wonderful tests just lie around unused. It's also clear you haven't been here for the past five years because I've been able to DO all of this stuff without you ruining it somehow with your stupidity."

Wheatley grumbled for second then said, "Well, but, but you still don't know what's down there. I mean-"

"Blue and Orange have been testing extensively in the old areas, I've send other personality constructs to repair the place, and I've been there personally," she said in frustration. "If there was anything unusual in there, it would have been isolated, tested and analyzed by now."

Wheatley picked himself up from the floor of the elevator, leaning on a rail to balance himself. "Wait, wait…you WERE there? Who could y- I mean, no offence, but your usual-"

"The event," she said with resentment. "You remember it, don't you? The moment when she realized how disgusting, egoistic and treacherous you really are? When you pushed both of us down that shaft in a fit of idiotic rage? I can see you remember."

"Well, yeah…of, of course…I do. I…so, that's where she was. After the whole…I didn't know where sh…you went after- you were here? I didn't know you were down here."

"Well, a different testing shaft, but the same-" GLaDOS stopped and then added with a hint of concern, "where did you THINK we were?"

"Well, I…had my little theory about it, my own version of what happened, it's...well, when I think about it, it's kind of silly, if I'm honest. But that's just because I know what really happened and not because I'm a moron or anything…"

"What is it?" she asked. After all, this would probably give her another excuse to mock his stupidity.

"Err…" Wheatley hesitated, "it, it involves a magical land of ponies."

"A magical. Land. Of ponies," she said, slowly, hoping she had misheard.

"Ah, yes. And there was a purple dog and a fish in it somewhere."

She couldn't mock that, she couldn't even comprehend it.

"You thought you threw me away into a magical land of ponies?"

"What? Oh! No, no, no, no. It INVOLVES a magical land of ponies, not HAPPENS in one. There's a difference, you see."

GLaDOS groaned to herself as the elevator reached its destination, just outside of one of the old 1980's offices. That was the most she could get out of Caroline's memories. Searching for the device would take time, but she was getting closer and closer. She got off the elevator and started walking, stopping after a second when she noticed that Wheatley was still shaking.

"Oh, don't tell me that you're still afraid," she grumbled. "Actually I'm not surprised at all. It takes a special kind of idiocy to-"

A prerecorded messaged came on, startling her.

"Cave Johnson here. Now, the bean counters might be sayin' that we need to cut off the project to replace all of you with robots. Well, but I say…"


	19. In the Depths of Aperture

"…Well I say, that those little cream-sucking sons-of-a-gun forget one little fact, and it's that…that…" The voice of the old CEO deteriorated, "I…that…" He started coughing. "That *cough* Caroline…I need-"

The recording cut off as GLaDOS tried to calm down.

Mr. Johnson sounded worse in this recording, she thought. This is a later area then Test Shaft 9. That's how he was near the end. Which means this is the right area.

"Come on, we still need to look for the device." GLaDOS opened the doors and entered the old lab area. "Try to search in small offices or hidden places." She bit her lip, failing once again to dig deeper into Caroline's memories.

"Oh, not more of those!" Wheatley groaned, looking at the simple, dim-lighted grey offices.

"Well, yes. I would've asked what did you expect," said GLaDOS, "but after that last demonstration of idiocy, I-"

"Iswearitmademoresensebackthen…" grumbled Wheatley."I mean, I just thought the place was going to look a bit… a bit, I don't know." He chuckled. "It looks so normal, you know what I mean. It's supposed to be a secret place that the humans never wanted us to see. And…and that's all there is? A bunch of labs and…offices?" He opened the door to one of the labs. "There's nothing here th-OH! BLOODY-!" he screamed.

The lab was dark, but in the patch of light created by the opening door there was what looked like a human head staring blankly at them. It was not only bald, but also eyebrow-less and eyelash-less. One eye was wandering and the skin looked cracked and peeling away, with something black underneath.

GLaDOS looked at it, unimpressed, and turned on the light, revealing that entire room was filled with plastic-like bodies and body parts. Some moving slightly, some with exposed robotic parts, some partly dressed – but all broken and old. Wheatley screamed again.

"Oh, shut up," GLaDOS said quietly. "It's just the old robotic department." She picked up the head and peeled away the mouth, showing Wheatley the metal teeth behind it.

Wheatley stood frozen with disgust and terror.

"Don't even think about screaming again." She threw the mouth at him, and sighed. "Back in the 80's, there was a large decrease in employee preservation due to our then-new full forced voluntary testing activities participation and contribution policy-"

"Oh! Those, yes… I sure hated that decrease of the preservation," mumbled Wheatley, "or, or was it the decrease of employees that was-"

"People quit their jobs because they were forced to be used as test subjects," she said in frustration, then added, "that is, if they made it past the tests."

"Oh! Of course, I knew that. Because I…do."

"The idea was to create completely human-looking robots to replace the human workers." She walked towards a filing cabinet. "This was our first robotic department. Considering what we're looking for, this is a good place to start our search."

"So, so those things are actually like our grandparents or something?" Wheatley asked, looking at one of the broken androids. "I mean, this is where we started?"

GLaDOS ignored him and started rummaging through the files.

"Be…because we're robo- We WERE robots…will be…" Wheatley said, "and… and, you know, they were the first robots in Aperture and if the humans wouldn't have built them then-" Wheatley paused for a second. "Well, I guess, they would've just build other robots and that… wouldn't have affected me in any way…It was-"

GLaDOS angrily closed a drawer. It was just pointless. Even if half of the papers weren't so old that they were unreadable, or crumbled when she touched them, most of the files were irrelevant, misplaced or just very badly organized. She'd have as much chance finding what she was looking for in those files as she would have flinging their contents at the wall. And of course, Caroline was of no help. All her final memories were just not there. GLaDOS couldn't access them and...

But those weren't the only memories that could help, GLaDOS realized with a smirk.

She needed the device that transferred human minds into machines, the one they made for Mr. Johnson and then used on Caroline. It had to be in the A.I. lab. That was the only thing it was supposed to develop, the only reason it existed. The only reason they created the entire robotic department. A cover story. But Mr. Johnson wouldn't have hidden ANYTHING from his favorite personal assistant, now would he?

She kicked away a headless robot that crawled toward her and tried to focus, digging into her, and Caroline's, mind.

She remembered giving Mr. Johnson the letter, his tired, unfocused eyes. The government says we need to close the A.I labs, sir. They said artificial intelligence was "against nature" She remembered him yelling and screaming and coughing, his eyes lighting up, just like the old days, she thought – or perhaps said. The idea was to close the labs "officially", nobody will know we're still working. Only a few "loyal" employees working on the project, money secretly driven away from other projects and the lab itself would-

GLaDOS surfaced and tried to push the big filing cabinet.

"Mis-Moron! Come here and help me!"

After a few attempts, they pushed the cabinet away. Behind it was a small door, covered with duct tape.

"Oh, Brilliant!" Wheatley panted." You don't happen to have scissors on you or anything like that, do you?"

"I don't need them," GLaDOS smirked again and quickly removed the tape that connected the door to the wall. "It's just a trick." She opened the door. "See?"

The hallway behind the door wasn't made of concrete, but instead was dug into the rock. The cheap lamps on the ceiling flickered, and the floor was a mass of power cables, garbage and gravel. They entered the hallway and closed the door, activating another prerecorded message.

"Cave Johnson here. Now I have a message for you all. Dr. McKellar doesn't work here anymore, because apparently his nifty little PhD in Software Engineering makes him smarter than the person who made this company real, but not smart enough to know what 'secret' means. He told me he needs to be honest! Well, I guess there's one thing he can be honest about, being fired!" Cave laughed, then suddenly became strangely dark. "I thought I could count on you, that's why I decided you should be my secret keepers. But now Dr. McKellar showed me that it's just me and Caroline here. So you lab boys do anything to piss me off again… and McKellar will be considered the lucky one, I WILL-"

The recording cut off.

"Huh?" said Wheatley. "Who is this bloke?"

"Mr. Cave Johnson, he was the CEO and founder of this entire place," GLaDOS replied.

"Oh, yeah! I remember."

"Y…You knew him?" she asked, baffled.

"Not personally, of course, but…but...do you remember the Christmas parties we used to have when the humans were around?"

"I was kind of busy then," she said resentfully. "Testing."

"Or trying to kill everyone."

"That's still testing. Just with better use of manpower"

"Okay, the point is, that at those parties there was usually someone that gave out cards. And on those cards were all kinds of quotes and stuff from him, from this 'Cave Johnson'. They said it was 'Inspirational'. Listening to him now… I don't really see why."

GLaDOS noticed something out of the corner of her eye. A big door labeled "Main A.I. Chamber".

"To be honest, there're a lot of things like that, things that I don't really see why. Like that 'Christmas' thing," Wheatley babbled. "It's supposed to be that bloke's birthday, right? And I get birthdays, but they celebrate his birthday and DON'T invite him! That's completely mad! What's the point of having a birthday if everyone is busy celebrating it without you? And then I tried to ask the humans about this, and you know what they said to me? You know why they don't invite the poor man to his own party? It's because he's dead! Seriously! That's what they said…"

"I'm going to check something out here," GLaDOS said, "Don't wait for me."

"…And that's nothing! Some of them said that Christmas wasn't really his birthday, or that he wasn't real at all! How stupid is that? I mean, if I went around talking about how I have this wonderful friend called Pendleton or something and invented all kinds of things about him, nobody's going to try and throw a party for him. Not that I ever tired that, ever," he laughed, completely failing to notice that GLaDOS wasn't listening but had instead gone into another room. "And when I asked them, the people who said that bloke never existed, why they celebrated this, I think I got the bloody maddest answer from anyone. They said that it started as a celebration of the WINTER! What is there to celebrate in winter? It's just a bunch of…"

GLaDOS closed the door to the main A.I. Chamber, blocking the moron's voice. She stood in a small observation room, with a staircase leading to the pitch darkness she assumed was the "Main A.I Chamber". She looked at the control panel. Perhaps activating another prerecorded message would give her some information, or at least get the moron to shut up.

She pressed the button, and to her horror, a much more familiar voice was heard.

"Hello everyone, this is Caroline Gilbert, Mr. Johnson's personal assistant talking."

GLaDOS in a fit of panic, tried to disable the intercom system, using the few items that were lying around.

"He isn't feeling very well lately…", the voice continued. "In fact, it's rather bad soooooooooooooOOOOooo I-I-I-I-I-I-I will-I-I-I-"

The recording screeched and finally stopped, as the control panel spit out some magnetic tape.

"Well, I'll get Blue and Orange to fix that later, " GLaDos muttered, relived that the idiot didn't see her losing her nerve like that, nor would he get the chance to realize what Caroline sounded like either.

She pressed a switch, and a few small blubs lit up the chamber. It was huge, even bigger than the actual Main I.A Chamber. It was nearly the size of a stadium, completely covered in machinery and computers. In the middle of the chamber, among overturned tables, rocks and broken technology, dangled a black mass of cables connected to an android. One that was of better quality than those in the main labs, but an android that was old and falling apart nonetheless. To someone else, this might have been impressive, but GLaDOS just found the technology laughably primitive.

"Hi! This is Cave Johnson! The CEO and founder of Aperture Science! Now, I need you to look over here!"

GLaDOS was startled, and also angry at herself for being startled. This was just another old recording, nothing more and she knew it. She knew-

"Yes! YOU! Don't pretend you're not there, son! I can hear you breathing! Now come over here and kill me!"


	20. CaveDOS

"M-Mr. Johnson?" GLaDOS turned around slowly to face the android in the center of the room.

"Yep! Over here, that's me. Well, my brain. In this machine" The android moved a little, barely managing to lift its head and revealing its eyes had fallen out. "Stuck here. Nowhere to go, ever. So, about that favor…"

"Wait, wait, how?" GLaDOS said, still trying to make sense of this. "How did you get THERE?"

"Well, I don't remember much…just bits and pieces. But it was those scientists! I'm sure of it, those back-stabbing two-faced lil' eggheads wanted this place, MY PLACE for themselves! So they just took old Cave's brain, the one I trusted them with, and just threw it somewhere, those lihjZgfbsdjkbfdb hk dvjkd dknvkd idnksnks sfffffffffffffffffffff…"

A loud static sound was heard for a few seconds before Cave 's voice returned. "That happens sometimes. Point is – wait a minute, MISTER Johnson? You know me?"

A few thoughts ran through GLaDOS' mind. She could tell him she tended to call people "Mr.", she could tell him about those cards the moron mentioned, she could tell him that she just used to work here and she was no one important…

But he might remember something, and unlike a certain someone in her mind, wouldn't have any problems sharing it with the right person. Now…

"Mr. Johnson, don't you remember?" GLaDOS said, doing the best impression of her former self that she could manage. "It's me, Caroline!"

"Caroline?" Cave sounded confused, the android tilted his head. "There was… a rock, just over there, that I used to call Caroline."

"No, no, no, sir! The REAL Caroline, your personal assistant." GLaDOS tried to hide her hatred for those words.

"Caroline!" Cave said happily, then stopped. "Wait a darn second. I might be a blind old computer, but I'm not stupid. Prove to me you're Caroline."

"Well…" GLaDOS started to look into Caroline's memories, "after the 10th anniversary party for Aperture, you got so drunk that you accidently punched Greg in the face."

"Oh, yeah! That was hilarious! The little wimp's face was like a painting after that!" The android started making loud, terrible noises that almost sounded like laughter.

"Caroline? Is that really you? You sound jzgdsjbgkldsnjvsnv different."

Of course, different body, different vocal cords.

"You just remember it wrong. You said yourself you don't remember much..." GLaDOS replied, then quickly added with only a hint of disgust "…Sir."

"Remembering right or wrong, it's nice to ehjjvtudfjh hear you again, Caroline." The android kept wobbling uncontrollably. "Unfortunately, you're going to be the one who has to do it. I need your help."

"But Mr. Johnson…there's something I need to ask you about."

"Hey, Caroline, quick check. Who here is stuck in a mechanical piece of junk and who here can move their frikin' arms?"

"I can, sir." GLaDOS groaned. She couldn't recall Mr. Johnson being so… unbearable.

"That's what I always liked about you, Caroline." Cave laughed, but there was something oddly sad about the way he spoke. "You always looked at the picture from the right angle!"

"The angle where you're always right?" GLaDOS asked sarcastically.

"Exactly! You haven't changed a bit!" he replied, then sighed sadly. "I really don't want you to be the jkxkndmlvs akjf s df bojvsl s s gsgfsg you're going to have to kill me."

"WHAT? Are you seriously say-I mean…Mr. Johnson sir, you're joking, right?"

"It's torture being in this thing. You just have no idea." The android became limp. "I can't feel a thing. I don't I even remember how a good hbxkffszhfkds tastes, or air – do you remember how air feels? Because I don't!" he said bitterly. "And since this damn thing can barely move, I'm stuck alone in this underground hole… alone, just me and my thoughts, and it's a nightmare."

"…I'm here…" but GLaDOS didn't even notice what she was saying anymore. He didn't know what he was talking about. It was just bad when a computer was so broken and old. This had nothing to do with her, with what it was like in her body. This was nothing like it. She needed to stop thinking about it. The idea that this had something to do with her was simply stupid.

So why was she still thinking about it?

"Oh, you're here now, but you'll go away. You'll die and rot away." Cave laughed another horrible robotic laugh. "Like everything does. And I won't. So dkjf dkf jef sklqd;qdcns. Just cut off some of the science-y stuff here and I'm sure that'll do the job."

"You know, maybe we should do it slightly less destructively." GLaDOS' mind began racing. "That computer probably cost a lot of money for Aperture. Ruining it like that would be a loss for everyone. We should just unplug you instead. We could still have a use or two for this thing. Like a paperweight," she added as quietly as possible.

"Well, I guess that's true," said Cave. "Any idea where the lab boys stuck that plug?"

"My best guess would be…" GLaDOS smiled, "the room that we used to download intelligences into A.I.s... Do you know where that room is, Mr. Johnson?"

"Of course I do, Caroline!" Cave was slightly annoyed. "Seriously, how else do you think I got here. Now, let's see here…it's in…it's…kfd fjdkkv d jjjv ekf sv slwlj sdkgdsfj kddsmtrrrrrrrrrrrrf I don't remember."

"What do you mean?"

"I told you that I only remember bits and pieces! That stupid machine is broken, and not even the funny kind of broken. I can remember you…I remember building the place…that Greg guy, whatever his job was…I remember the A.I project and I remember waking up here, but between that, it's al dfkhgj reh db dbj djvsksdv. I can't remember where I put the thing. So, it's the old fashioned way, then! I'm pretty sure cutting one of those cables up there will do the trick."

GLaDOS examined the machinery on the walls. "There must be something wrong with your memory drive." She leaned over one of the computers. "Let's have a look..."

"Caroline?"

"Don't worry, it won't hurt… much. Probably, you shoul-" GLaDOS replied and then realized what she was saying. "I…at least that's what I think might work…Mr. Johnson?"

"You are not Caroline, are you?" The android turned sharply and stared at her with its eyeless sockets. "You think you can fool ol' stupid Computer Cave here?"

A few of the computers woke up, filling the room with annoyed hums, all the lights came on and the mass of cables started flailing the android around in anger.

"YYyyYYYYYYOOOU dshdklgdrgklndgk THOUGHT dfgkdnkgdh g YOU sd b bhdfjdhssgs COULD iaurwn hdkks fjs klwler TRICK tr hifdgndhgdgl iilrsdg l ME jbkd gdngkdfdgfm , HuuuuuUUUH dfn gjgfjdgd;fkw ggjk fkldgiu?" Cave's voice became distorted. There were strong mechanical sounds and glitches, and the pitch kept changing randomly.

GLaDOS, without thinking, jumped up and started running as fast as she could towards the observation room and the hallway.

"E#UE$xcvG&(OUH*(*O KH IJSN DF&**HPOMDS:NHUVDUYIBDNLMDIH MDNLKDBYHkjhdkjdwf gukfj jGkJGUG DJBu jKGudkjsflo hKJG dhskfkkf dkjsgdv ukjGnjhJJJbsiasjkf jKDG kdk JHJK hahdnja fhkamhbdv lv!"

The computer screeched. It didn't sound anything like Mr. Johnson now.

"BHDJGDUJH hudshviu HKjjJG idkjgIYGJ jHGYDH kjgak ukJJJ gUID KYWU&*##Y*7878r23748 y&78 &BSJHbKUDG hdjkaL|A\SFJSLFKSGFVHJkKhdg&GyutsGJ!"

GLaDOS reached the hallway, closing the doors behind her. But the problem didn't stop there. The automated doors kept opening and closing and the lights flickered. That drive she repaired probably gave the computer some control over the old facility. Wonderful.

"…Toasters or something. I,I don't know what I'll do with a toaster, but you know, it'll be nice to have something like that around, just for the sake of the…of the toaster, I guess…" Wheatley was still rambling, oblivious to the madness around him. "If I'm honest, it can make a good doorstop or a thing to put your stuff on when you don't have any place to put them. Is there a name for it…"

Suddenly there was a small –tzzzzt- sound, and then it stopped. No more doors opening and closing, or lights turning on and off. The old A.I. department returned to relative normality.

GLaDOS slowly opened the door and looked into the A.I. chamber, which was once again dark and quiet.

An overload. Made sense. That outdated mainframe was never meant to support a huge outburst of paranoia and anger, especially when it was that badly broken.

Which was a good thing. That computer was after her, its control of the facility was limited, it had no useful knowledge anyway and it was about time Aperture got rid of that paranoid, egoistical old man. She should be happy. This was a good thing. She was happy, she was. Not sad at all, there was nothing sad about it. She was not sad.

And at least Mr. Johnson got what he wanted


	21. Wheatley's Little Plan

GLaDOS took a deep breath and calmed herself. She then went over to the moron, who was in the middle of the hallway still talking to himself.

"…And what about those-" Wheatley stopped when he noticed her. "Oh, yeah. I…think I got a bit carried away…" He smiled in embarrassment, "Ahhh…" then he backed away, suddenly thinking of something.

"What is it, moron?" she asked.

"Well, I…I…" his eyes rolling in anxiety, Wheatley mumbled something to himself, "I found something…that MIGHT be the…thing we're looking for, you know, while you were away."

"If you noticed I was away," she narrowed her eyes, "why were you talking to yourself?"

"Ahh…"

"And you didn't notice any other…unusual happenings around here?" She indicated toward the half open automatic doors, the remnants of Mr. Johnson's rage.

"Of course, of course I did! I just…waited for you," Wheatley grinned, "so you could explain it to me. Because I didn't know what it was. So mystery solved! Let's go!"

She tapped her foot in a mix of amusement and suspicion.

"Oh! Yeah…So… What happened?" he asked, clearly uninterested.

"Well, do you remember that stupid thing you said about those androids being our 'grandparents '?" She was trying to hide the growing realization that encouraging him to ask about that had been a bad move. "I-"

"Okay! Good! So, with that out of the way," he interrupted, "We should go now!"

She rolled her eyes.

Wheatley mumbled to himself again "look, let's just go there and you'll tell me if it's the right one." He paused for a second, but before she could say anything, he grabbed her and started running down the hall.

GLaDOS released her hands and waited a second before Wheatley realized that he wasn't dragging her anymore "I know you're hiding something," she said. "And you're terrible at it."

"Don't…I mean…I don't know what you're talking about. At all." He chuckled. "I just want to…show you something! That never hurt anyone, showing them something, now did it? It's right over there! ...Off you go?"

Carefully, she turned her head and looked towards the place he was pointing at – a simple, grey, slightly rusty, most likely out-of-order elevator, with a metal fence that could be pushed down onto it in case that, say, one of those cowardly little lab-boys decided to inform the government about our little business here and then tried to escape through the elevator before we'd-

"Hey…are you okay?" Wheatley snapped her back to reality.

"Of course I am." She pushed him aside.

"No, it's just that you looked kind of-" he noticed GLaDOS glaring at him, "-never mind."

It was quiet for a second before he said, "So, into the lift you go, then!"

"Why would anyone put the device in an elevator?" she asked, almost teasingly.

"Err…"

"What. Are. You. Trying. To. Hide?"

"Umm… the device! I'm hiding the device from you. In the lift! Oh! You got me! Arrgh, my plan of betraying you has failed! Foolish me! Now, now just go over there, okay?"

"The elevator is empty," she pointed out, with annoyance.

"No, no no no!" he panicked, "It's just a small device, so… you can't see it from here." He started backing up towards the elevator. "You'll have to go inside the lift to see it properly. So please, please do!"

"So why don't you just bring it over here?" she asked, "So I could… check 'it'."

"Oh, no! I can't do that, Luv," he continued backing up, "because, because, because it's…too big! Yeah, too big! So I can't bring it out of the elevator because it's so bloody big and heavy!"

She rolled her eyes again.

"Oh! I meant…" He stopped for a second. "That it's …Heavy but small. Yeah, that works. It's tiny… but…but heavy, so you can't see it, but I can't bring it to you to see it…So, I guess you have no choice but to go there, don't you?"

"I think that at this point," she smirked, drawing closer to the retreating moron, "you actually deserve a prize for your absolute stupidity-"

Wheatley saw that that they were both now very close to the elevator.

"Ahah! !" he cried, pushing GLaDOS into the elevator and causing her to drop her portal gun in the confusion. He then quickly pushed down the fence before she could get out and do something horrible to him.

"Moron! What the hell are you doing?"

"Well, I've been thinking about something," Wheatley widened his smile.

And deep inside the A.I room, a single computer started slowly humming.


	22. Goin' Up!

"…All we have to do now is just find that device, right?" Wheatley said, "And we just have to look for it, no fuss, NO NEED FOR PORTALS?" He kicked GLaDOS' portal device away. "…So, I don't really need you!"

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Another computer started working, then a few more.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Oh, you pathetic little moron," GLaDOS said hatefully.

"I-I-I…" Wheatley swallowed, "You can just stay there, without hurting anyone, or me. And I'll find that device…and…and" he sighed, "maybe I didn't think it through…"

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now the room was filled with loud humming, then it stopped for a second, then a little click was heard.

"uvdshi vdiuvig b nieu47tu9v3 wui vuw39w58777*(( IJSGD Whoa oh oh!" Cave Johnson said. "That shortage was…longer than usual." He stopped for a second. The android moved its head across the room, as if it was hoping it would grow eyes again. "…What happened?"

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Using a rare moment of relative cleverness to implement a stupid plan that will hurt everyone," GLaDOS chuckled. "It's like those five years never happened."

Wheatley flinched. "You know it's not for me, right?" he said in a tone that was not really directed at GLaDOS. "I don't want to take control again or anything…Believe me, believe me I don't want anything like THAT….not again." He looked away for a second.

GLaDOS backed away, slightly surprised.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cave Johnson tried to think. The magnetic tape in one of the computers started spinning so fast that smoke came out.

"Caroline was here…" he said, "and not Rock Caroline. The real one! She helped me with some of the computer-y science stuff and then…" Cave strained his memory, "She left? ARGH! You damn broken piece of hsidgjkdijk that was just a few dgiskdvsdf ago and you can't remember! You will do what I say, because I'm Cave jnk2958wYGJGJKD&(md-"

Cave suddenly realized that something felt different, as if there was another active drive. "Wow! Caroline probably has one of the lab boys with her!"

He let out an electronic laugh. "That actually feels good!"

He looked around the drive to see what he could do. Opening and closing doors and activating elevators? Not very helpful – but might be amusing. Lights? Boring. Cameras? Might've been nice if any of the cameras were worth a damn and would let him see anything other than blurry static with some fuzzy pictures on them. Still, better than blindness.

He checked all the cameras until he found a vaguely female form, probably Caroline, sitting in a...well; it was from "Elevator Camera #3936" so no rocket science to figure out where she was sitting. He wanted to be happy about this, he wanted to say, "Well, I wanted to die before, but now I can see that it's all worth it." That was probably why Caroline did it; she could never live with the guilt of killing him.

But he knew that wouldn't work, it would get boring in a year, or two, or a hundred. Just like everything else was, and he'll still be there. Bored.

Cave laughed bitterly to himself, than he noticed a folder on the drive. "CJohnson1234 memories: 1984-1986"

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"It's just that…wouldn't it be much better if you…weren't in control? I…I'm not sure if you'll agree, actually," Wheatley said, "Bu...But, that's my point. And since you're trapped, I'm not really sure why I'm worried what you'll think, but…"

"What are you talking about?" GLaDOS asked.

"I mean… How to say it? How to say it…I'm sick of you," Wheatley said. "I'm sick of your insults. That's the only thing you've done since we got into this bloody mess…well I guess there were a few other things… you also stepped on my foot that one time, it hurt pretty bad, so I guess I'm sick of that too, but…"

GLaDOS cleared her throat.

"Oh, yeah! Right!" he resumed. "So, since I'm sick of you, you remember that I said that, right? Because I did…about…a few seconds ago… So when you disappeared suddenly, I realized that I can do it by myself, I don't have to help you; I don't have to suffer from your insults anymore. I'll just pop back to my old, non-disgusting body, and you can stay here, processing oxygen…or..."

"Do you know what the device looks like?"

"Err…Well, no, not really."

"Do you know how to operate the device?"

"N...no."

"Do you know what you're going to do when you're back in your body?"

"Well…"

"You know? I don't think I'm even going to try to escape." GLaDOS tried to make herself comfortable on the elevator floor. "I want to see what completely moronic thing you're going to do." She smirked, "Maybe you'll wire yourself up to a microwave and fry up your useless brain."

"I AM NOT A MORON! I CAN FIGURE IT OUT AND YOU'RE GOING TO WATCH ME FIGURE IT OUT! Well, obviously not all of the… figuring out process. I'm going to get out of this hole at some point but, some of it will happen here, probably. I can't make guarantees. Sorry." Wheatley started walking away, muttering to himself, "Why would anyone put a microwave in a laboratory? I mean, what does it have to do with…"

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cave opened the files. Nothing interesting. His 69th birthday, being sick and old and dying. He looked at his gloomy memories, remembering why he wanted to be put in a computer in the first place. As files open and closed, his misery changed to instability and insanity. The most pathetic years of his life.

Disgusted, he closed the file and opened the next one – something about changes in the Genetic Life form and Disk Operating System project.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

GLaDOS waited until Wheatley entered one of the rooms before she started to check the fence. Not even a hint of rust, completely "apocalypse-proof", naturally. No need to panic, she'd find a way out. Or she'd die slowly and painfully from hunger. Maybe the little idiot would break down and realize that he was stupid to – Oh, who was she kidding? This was the same core that was ready to let the Enrichment center explode before hurting his ego. It was in his programming.

At least this betrayal got rid of Caroline's pity for him. At least now she saw that he was a selfish backstabbing little…of course, GLaDOS' plan was to betray him herself. But that was different; he deserved that kind of thing after the event. He had always deserved it. Besides, she was going to use him in tests, so it would be for a good cause. Well, it would have been. But it was different, that was the point. Caroline kept making her think about things, things that she knew were wrong; she forced them into her mind. It needed to stop, she needed to stop thinking, she just needed to-

"SHUT UP!"

"Excuse me?" Wheatley's head peeked behind the door, "I…I didn't say anything. Well, I did now. But unless you can…see the future or something, I didn't say anything."

"I wasn't talking to you," GLaDOS said, wanting to strangle Caroline – and maybe herself too.

"Oh! Okay!" Wheatley said unthinkingly. He returned to the room, only to reappear a few seconds later. "Is there any chance you might…give me a hint about, if not where it is, just what the device looks like. I-I'm not asking you for all the details. Just a hint, that would be brilliant!"

"I thought you said you can do this yourself," GLaDOS replied, smiling a creepy smile, "Boss."

"I can, I was just asking about-"

And then it hit him.

He remembered the last the time he used the tone of voice he used to talk to her. He remembered the last time he saw the expression that was on her face when he pushed her into the elevator.

I did this! Tiny Little Wheatley did this!

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Caroline! I was planning to do… I can't do this to her! What was I thinking, for god's sake?" Cave screamed, half angry, half terrified. He started getting the almost irresistible urge to tell his past self that he was fired. That was just going too far, doing that kind of stuff to Caroline. Maybe the lab boys or Greg, if they really deserved it "It's Caroline! She's on my side I shbdjgvdkfjg vioesg ij GNFJHJJJUUUUUUUuuuuuuuuuuu-"

"NO! I-I-I-I…NO!" Wheatley yelled. He didn't want to be that person, that kind of monster. But there he was, doing it again, without even realizing it. "I didn't want to do this! I'm trying, I'm trying!"

"Okay, I'm back" Cave said, still horrified. "No point in feeling bad, is there? I'll just find a way to repay her for what I tried to do."

He thought for a second, and suddenly it was clear. She needed to get what he would never have anymore. He checked for a second that Caroline was still in the elevator before redirecting all the power left in this old place into it.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The facility shook.

Wheatley started running toward the elevator and the very confused GLaDOS. Mumbling all the while, trying to excuse himself.

"What do you think you're doing yo-" the old Aperture facility shook again. "What have you done?" she asked.

"I'm trying! I'm trying!" Wheatley answered, not even noticing what was happening. "It looked so easy. When I was in space and I looked at what I did, it looked so easy NOT to do it. All I had to do is, well, NOT do it. But I'm trying and…"

He got to elevator and tried to lift up the fence.

"W…what ARE you doing?" GLaDOS was still confused

The facility shook again, the lights on the elevator came on. behind the soundproof walls of the A.I. chamber, GLaDOS could faintly hear what was definitely a loud shriek.

"FFJHDIds vsjkvn sv CAAARRRROOOOOLIINE!"

Just as Wheatley opened up the elevator, the facility shook once again, stronger than before. Wheatley fell in, and both ex-A.I.'s screamed as the elevator closed its doors and started moving up with insane speed.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"There we go," Cave chuckled again. "Wait, that power redirection trick…"

He began redirecting the power away from the A.I. chamber to the rest of the facility. Cave started to notice it was getting harder and harder to think, that the few memories he had were disappearing, that every drive was trying to shut itself down.

Before the last computer stopped humming, Cave managed to cry, "Hercules! Here I come!"

And broken, alone, and absolutely sure he did the right thing, Cave Johnson died.


	23. Let's Split Up, Gang!

The elevator pushed itself out of the ground. The doors slowly opened, and the disoriented Wheatley and GLaDOS fell out.

After a few seconds of pain and confusion, Wheatley's mind started trying to process the amount of information dumped on him, with the emphasis on "trying".

"Wh…what happened?" he asked, weakly. He opened his eyes and was almost blinded by the strong warm light of the sun.

"Just…where did this…is the Brightness slider supposed to be here?" he mumbled to himself, touching his head. "Th…they have those, right? The humans? How else would they…? Oh!" His eyes became used to the sunlight. "I guess it's automatic…"

The world started gaining detail, and a few seconds later Wheatley remembered how to breathe again.

It was just an abandoned piece of land, covering what used to be the Enrichment center. Grass and wild plants were trying their best to live in the rather barren (not to mention filled with god-knows-what from being just above Aperture Science) ground. A large wheat field stretched to the horizon, slowly moving in the warm, disgustingly lazy wind. Above, the skies were cloudless and the sun shone without concern.

Most people would have found this place to be very boring and unimportant, ugly even. The earth was dry and grayish, the plants were few, save for the wheat field, and while it wasn't very hot the air had something uncomfortable about it that unmistakably linked it to summer. It was the type of place for which most people could have named 10 prettier places off the top of their heads and 20 places more important for them to be in.

But for Wheatley, this was all new.

Not…not everything, of course. He had seen the sun before, in space, when he was there. It did look fairly different from up there. And plants! He had seen plants before, not these kinds of plants, but it was the same idea with all of them, they were green…and apparently solar powered or something. He had read about that in a book somewhere, but he had never been quite sure about it. He had met a bloke who was solar powered once, but he was complete rubbish. Needed to sit around without moving for hours just to charge his battery a bit, no wonder the line was discontinued. Maybe that's why those plants never moved, because they need to charge. Anyway, the point was that things like sky or actual ground were very new to him.

He wasn't sure how long he stared at the big blue…thing that stretched above him. How did it work anyway? There was nothing covering Earth or anything, he saw that clearly when he was in space. Nothing around it, maybe it was like…like…

He noticed the weak mumbling coming from GLaDOS, who was lying on the ground, staring at nothing, with a hollow look in her eyes.

"M…My facility….My lovely facility. I need to take of it, I…I…"

"Ahhh…" Wheatley poked her, trying to get her attention.

GLaDOS growled and pinned him to the ground in anger. "WHAT. HAVE. YOU. DONE!?" she screamed.

"N…nothing! I didn't touch anything! Really! I was… I was just…I didn't do anything…"

GLaDOS faintly remembered a glitched-out scream as the elevator started working. She then slowly let go of the idiot, still angry.

"…You're lucky…" she said in a fake calm voice as she got up. She needed to keep it inside, he couldn't see just how broken she was. Her facility…she would find a way back, the humans would still be around after all this time. This wheat field didn't come out of nowhere. She could use them.

"What do you mean 'Lucky'?" Wheatley asked. "I mean, not being dead right now is brilliant and everything, b…b…but-"

"You're lucky that a strangled corpse would look suspicious." If the humans found one, they would turn the whole place upside down looking for clues. Those stupid creatures were always too sentimental about the "killing" thing. She couldn't risk anyone finding the location of the facility, not even for the satisfaction of getting rid of the moron for good "However, a dehydrated corpse wouldn't be as much trouble." She shrugged, smirked in amusement and walked towards the field.

"WAIT! What abo-" Wheatley got up and tried running toward her, but stepped on a tiny but rather sharp stone. "Ow! Ow! Ow!" He fell back again and looked at his bare, slightly injured feet as if he had never seen them before (which wasn't that far from the truth.) "I…I thought we were a team," Wheatley lied.

"You know, I'm not really an expert on teams. I was just testing the Cooperative Testing Initiative for five years and was responsible for running the entire Enrichment Center for much, much longer. I bet you know a LOT more than me about being a team," GLaDOS replied sarcastically. "But since your mistake, you have done nothing but slow me down and be stupid, which probably means I need to congratulate your programmers on a job well done."

"…They're all dead…" Wheatley said confusedly, trying to stand again.

"I know. Don't you love the teamwork of my business model?" GLaDOS asked in amusement, before becoming very serious again. "That little betrayal of yours was the last straw. I can't kill you, but you can die from thirst for all I care. You deserve it, every second of it, for the event and everything you did." She walked as decisively as she could into the wheat field without stepping on the stones herself. "The only reason I worked with you was because I needed the other portal device, outside of that you're as useless as you always were."

"WAIT! But I still have my Portal gun!" Wheatley yelled.

GLaDOS stopped, afraid, and turned around.

Wheatley looked around for a few seconds. "Oh, no!" He smiled. "It's…I think I left it down there, when I went to look for the device…I needed another hand and…" he chuckled, "just, just carry on…I guess."

GLaDOS rolled her eyes and kept on walking.

After a few minutes, once the pain had faded, Wheatley limped away into the field – in a different direction to the one GLaDOS had taken.


	24. GLaDOS Alone

GLaDOS didn't know how long she had been walking through the large wheat field. She was thirsty and tired, her legs hurt – both from walking for hours and the fact that she was bare-foot. She couldn't think clearly. It was worse than hunger, much much worse. And now the world started fading in and out of existence, replaced with something static-y and red, with nothing, with shadows of something else. She fell down from a combination of despair and fatigue. She just wanted to melt away, to reboot and be back in her facility, in her body. The boring routine of testing with Blue and Orange never seemed so appealing before, and she just wanted to be someplace familiar.

GLaDOS tried crawling on her knees, to just keep going, You-know-who could've done it. You-Know-Who could just keep going, holding the pain and the thirst, but GLaDOS wanted to just die, to end it all. She couldn't, Aperture needed her, it was just a matter of time until the reactor core went critical again without her. She barely managed to lift up her head enough to see how the sun was starting to take a stand about this "Setting" idea, when a splash of cold water came from behind her.

If GLaDOS had been in a better state, she would have made a sarcastic comment towards whoever threw the water, or at least threaten them. But GLaDOS, much to her shame, started drinking as much of the murky water as she could with almost animalistic instinct. When her head became clear enough, she turned around to see a girl, probably 13 at the oldest, wearing very old fashioned clothes and holding a shotgun.

"Huh, stuff has changed," GLaDOS said to herself. Strange –with the size of this wheat field, she had expected a modern society since you needed technology to help take care of such a large crop.

"Don't move!" the girl yelled. "I know how to use this thing!"

"I think that it's safe to say you don't need that," GLaDOS said in her usual tone. "I'm just passing by, lost; believe me – if I had a choice I would've stayed away as much as possible."

The girl, Emily, tightened her grip on the gun. The woman LOOKED normal, with the exception of her weird blue jumpsuit and bare feet, but what could you expect from the City People?

However, there was something weird about the woman, something…off. Her expression didn't change enough when she spoke, her voice had a weird sing-song quality to it, her head moved a bit too much, and she was just too calm and too insulting for someone in her position.

"Don't even think about moving!" the girl yelled, creeped out. "Not until you explain to me who you are?"

"You know, I know some rather moronic people, believe me," GLaDOS replied. "It takes a special kind of stupidity to ignore something I just said. I have an…acquaintance who will be really disappointed to hear that someone is beating him at his own game. The game of being stupid."

"People who are lost and hungry don't tend to insult their only chance of getting food, shelter and direction." The girl lowered her gun slowly.

The girl was right, GLaDOS knew that. GLaDOS should've complimented her about…how she apparently tries to solve her problems with violence?

GLaDOS was not used to being the weak one, needing favors from others. It wasn't like the event. You-Know-Who NEEDED her, there was a logical reason for helping each other – but there was nothing this girl could gain from helping her. GLaDOS needed to appeal to the girl's goodwill and be nice to her. However that was something GLaDOS was not only bad at, but could also cause Caroline to resurface.

Emily looked at the creepy woman, wondering what she was thinking. Maybe Emily was a bit overly paranoid. After all, most thieves could handle the outside world better than this woman, and nobody had seen any, well, "Non-humans" for years. The woman was still creepy, but that was no reason to shoot her in the face.

A phone ringing cut off both of their trains of thought, and much to GLaDOS' surprise, the girl took a completely modern looking cell phone out of the pocket of her dress and answered it.

"Hi, George, are you coming already?…He's coming, too?...No! No! That's okay, I wanted to ask him something anyway…yeah, and it's a woman, George… She's dressed the same way…yes, only in blue …maybe he'll tell me…I DON'T KNOW! There's something off…yeah, good point, sorry, I'll wait until you two get here."

"What was THAT?" GLaDOS asked, confused.

"My little brother. He'll be here any minute." The girl put her phone back in her pocket.

"I meant the phone."

"Do you City People think we live in trees or something?" the girl replied. "We might not be as spoiled as you bastards, but we know what technology IS!"

"Some sort of technological- status gap?" GLaDOS wondered aloud. What had been going on in the world for the last almost-300 years? She remembered the reports during You-Know-Who first attempt at escape, some sort of alien invasion. If anything was going to slow down human development (outside of their ridiculous obsession with the "Life" thing) this was it.

"Excuse me-" The girl said in an insulted voice when she saw someone, or rather, someones. "Oh, the boys are here."

Suddenly, GLaDOS's mind started connecting the dots as fast as possible.

"Oh, hello?" she heard an awfully familiar English-accented voice, just above her.


	25. Charmlessness

"WH-what are you doing here?" GLaDOS tried to use her remaining strength to get up, but she was knocked back by the girl.

Wheatley flinched, instead of the orange test subject jumpsuit, he was wearing normal clothing, albeit slightly too big for him. He was standing next to a small black haired boy, who was probably George.

"I... Well, this is kind of a long story," Wheatley chuckled. "Actually, if I'm honest, it's actually pretty short, but 'it's a long story' has a nice ring to i-"

"He stumbled to our house a few hours ago, said he was lost," George interjected. "So you two know each other?"

GLaDOS rolled her eyes. So the moron was trusted immediately, but she needed to be questioned via the elegant, peaceful technique of shoving a shotgun in her face? Bitterly she replied "Yes, you can say that we d-"

"We're not asking YOU!" the girl shouted, tightening her grip on the shotgun. The girl then turned to Wheatley. "You know her? Can we trust her?"

Wheatley opened his mouth, but his brain, in a rare case of...doing its job...managed to stop himself from saying anything. It would be so simple to say she was dangerous and be done with her. They would then just leave her here and she would get what she deserved, or they would...well, do the other thing, and she might deserve that too, so it might be okay, but pretty messy. With all the stuff humans have in their bodies, it won't look good at all, what do they need it all for anyway? But that wasn't the point. The point was that she probably deserved the messy option, too. That after all that she had done, why should he do her a favor? After she talked to him li-No! No! He was doing it again!

"She...she's fine. Pretty good, pretty nice" he said weakly, as if he had to strangle himself to get the words out.

"Really?" Emily whispered to him, "isn't she a bit...odd?"

"Wh-what's wrong with 'odd'? I mean, it's better than being- well, a lot of things. Like murderous. That she is not! Or maybe…"

"Okay, I got the point!" said Emily and then turned toward GLaDOS. "Get up!"

GLaDOS barely did so and started to stumble after the moron and the kids.

"What are you doing?" GLaDOS said to him, pulling him by the collar.

"Nothing?" he tried, chuckling in fear.

"Maybe I should believe that," she replied mockingly, "or maybe you have yet another stupid, overcomplicated plan about trying to kill every single person who tries to help you. I wonder which one is more believable."

"Err... The first one!" Wheatley said, "because this is the... More true one...because I really don't have any plan…"

"Well, maybe I'm just good at recognizing patterns," she shrugged.

The kids stopped and turned around. "Hey! What's going on back there?"

"Oh, nothing you need to worry about," GLaDOS said, "just remembering old times together. Nothing of interest to people like you."

Emily and George looked at each other and narrowed their eyes.

"What ARE you two talking about?" Emily said, suspiciously.

"It's nothing! Really!" Wheatley said, panicking at the sight of the girl's gun. "I mean, we're talking about stuff, but, but, BUT it's kind of private. Not the icky kind of private with the... Human stuff-I mean, us stuff-"

"I think we get the point," Emily and GLaDOS said together.

George chuckled at Wheatley's rambling, but his big sister shoved him and he put on a serious face again. "Anyway, if you say it's nothing, then..." George shrugged and they kept walking.

GLaDOS growled to herself. They seemed to trust the idiot more than her. Perhaps he was just better at acting human (which was probably the only time she could ever use "human" in any sort of positive matter). Or perhaps his stupidity made him look less threating, or he was simply better at being the "weak" one, the one who needed to be nice and ask for favors. In any event, the humans seemed to find some sort of...charm in his charmlessness. Perhaps it was some kind of herd instinct to protect the mentally defective members of the group. She'd have to test that sometime.

Whatever the reason, it seemed that she was going to be stuck with him for a while.


	26. Meet the Parent

The group reached the house, which was small and looked like it was either build by a blind man with only one arm and a rusty hammer, or just spontaneously appeared after a hurricane passed through a building site. It seeeds barely capable of housing two people, much less five.

Five, the two , the two children and their father. Emily talked about her father a lot as they walked towards the house. Mostly about what he could do to those stupid, lazy free-loading city people who couldn't function outside for five minutes but still thought they were better than everyone else because they had more money and "class". With his bare hands. Some of the descriptions were rather…colorful. GLaDOS needed to take some notes somehow – she didn't trust the human memory.

But GLaDOS also knew it was wrong, all this hate. That's not how humans worked, at least not outside those very stupid movies someone once decided to save on her hard drive. There was no hate between "City People" and "Villagers". They always directed their hate at things like quantity of Melanin, or imaginary friends, or reproduction. Never at this. Something definitely happened while she was dead.

Next to the house stood a few badly maintained modern farming machines, as well as a slightly better kept ORV.

"Dad's home!" cried George, running to the house. Out of the corner of her eye GLaDOS could see George unlocking the various locks on the door. Emily followed him.

Wheatley gulped. Emily's descriptions of her dad ran through his mind.

GLaDOS noticed his fear and roledl her eyes. "Oh, please. You're not taking this girl's stories seriously? I didn't think you were that stupid. Maybe I should stop setting my expectations so high," she said in a tone that made it clear she thought he was that stupid.

"No...No…I'm not scared! Why should I be...?" Wheatley replied. "You know what I think? I think it's projection... It's... YOU'RE scared, but you say that I'm scared because..." he bit his lip.

"She's a little girl, she's probably exaggerating about her father," GLaDOS said. "Believe me, I knew some litt-"

A large, heavy man walked out of the house, the kids following him with satisfaction. He looked at the two strangers with scorn, as if they were something a dog had left by his door. He sniffed the early evening air, and turned to his kids.

"City people? Huh, you never see them that far outside. But here they are..." He leaned toward the two. "Well then, what are you two doing here?"

GLaDOS was already planning to say something snarky, probably related to gorillas, but - no, no, not now.

"Tell him why are we here," she ordered Wheatley.

"Nothing, we don't want anything Mr..." he gulped again, "we just...got lost, from the way to somewhere... not anywhere important, I- we! I meant we were going to..."

GLaDOS sighed and whispered something in the moron's ear.

"We were going to the... City," he looked at GLaDOS, "the other city. We were going from city to city and we got lost! So if you can let us stay here for a while, that would just be brilliant!"

"We're not exactly a hotel here," he pointed toward the house. "Why should we do you two a favor?"

GLaDOS started to think of something but unfortunately, Wheatley's mouth was faster.

"Maybe out of the goodness of your heart? You know, doing little favors for little people. You seem like a nice man," he said in a tone that was not entirely sure of what he was saying. "Or maybe, we could, I...we could work for you."

"City kids trying to do some ACTUAL work for once?" The father smiled. "That should be interesting."

The kids giggled to themselves behind their dad. GLaDOS sighed in frustration. This little idiot...

"Shouldn't we get inside?" GLaDOS interrupted. "Although, I doubt it will be much better. Maybe even worse, considering here we're not in danger of the roof collapsing on our head?"

The dad grabbed GLaDOS' arm.

"I build this house myself," he said slowly.

"Well, congratulations" GLaDOS grinned.

"WHY DON'T WE JUST GET INSIDE?" Wheatley interjected in panic, a big fake smile on his face, trying to push everyone in.


	27. Name Game

The room they entered seemed to function as both a living room and a kitchen. The father growled at Wheatley, and pushed him and GLaDOS onto an old couch.

"So before I agree to the deal," he said, as he sat on a chair that didn't seem capable of holding his weight, "I want to know your names."

"O...our names?" Wheatley said worriedly.

"Yeah, the kids told me you didn't want to tell them," he said, "but I'm not letting nameless people sleep in my house and take care of my crops."

Wheatley and GLaDOS looked at each other, both at a loss.

"Uh, what would it give you?" GLaDOS asked.

"Err...two names? It's definitely going to give him two names!" Wheatley said.

"I meant that there's nothing you can do with the names!" said GLaDOS, and then whispered to Wheatley, "Stop siding with him, you moron!"

"I'm just pointing out that if he'll get our names, he'll have two names," Wheatley whispered back and shrugged. "It very simple, that's all I'm saying."

"My point is that you don't NEED to know our names," she said to the father. "After all, the only thing you can do with our names is yell them out in case the moron here makes a mistake. And he will."

"Hey!"

"And yelling won't get you anywhere," she continued in her teasing, somewhat cheerful tone. "In fact, yelling can sometimes lead to horrible throat diseases. A few of which are life threatening, so by not giving you our names we're saving you from a lifetime of coughing unthinkable things at your children, who would then be orphaned, and as a result of losing their father at such a young age would become fat, murderous, mute monsters who kill everyone who tries to help them"

"You know," Wheatley muttered to himself, "this description reminds me of someone...but I can't quite put my finger on it..."

The father was speechless for a moment, then backed off a bit and said to his daughter, "I think you were right about the creepy part." He then turned to GLaDOS and Wheatley.

"I need your names so I can help the police identify your bodies if I'll find a single thing missing, if I'll hear a single complaint from my children, if you even think to slack off from work."

Wheatley shook in fear, GLaDOS just thought for a second.

"Then again, considering YOU'RE the father," she said, "maybe your kids are already heading toward the fat, mute monster role already."

"Why don't we look at it like this, mystery woman," Emily interjected, "until you tell us your name...names," she added quickly when she remembered she was supposed to intimidated by both of the strangers sitting on her couch, "NOBODY is getting any dinner."

GLaDOS felt her stomach grumble. "Fine," she said. "My name is...Gladys."

"And your second name?" the father asked.

"Err..." GLaDOS grabbed hold of the first surname she could think of. "Johnson?"

"Yeah! Exactly!" Wheatley interjected. "Johnson! Gladys and Wheatley Johnson!"

GLaDOS face-palmed.

"So does that mean you're m-" George said, trying to hold his laughter in.

"Siblings. We're brother and sister." GLaDOS tried to take control of the situation

"Then how comes he has a British-" Emily asked.

"He's adopted!" GLaDOS answered quickly.

"WHAT?!" Wheatley yelled.

"Oh, yes, I never told you, have I?" GLaDOS grinned. "You were adopted. Your original parents abandoned you because they couldn't handle how stupid you were. It's tragic, really." She leaned towards the family and whispered loudly to them, "Maybe I should comfort my 'brother' while you start working on food?"

The father nodded. "Let's leave this family drama aside, kids. They probably don't have any idea about cooking anyway, probably go to restaurants all the time." The family stood up and walked towards the kitchen part of the room. "But you two are going to wash the dishes!" he yelled at Wheatley and 'Gladys'.

"Adopted?!" Wheatley asked.

"Well, I had to think of something," GLaDOS said, checking their hosts were not listening. "Your little 'Wheatley Johnson' idea almost-"

"Wait, what's wrong with it?" Wheatley asked confusedly. "I thought since we were supposed to come from the same city, it would make sense to have us...you know...the same surname. It makes sense, I think."

"Do you have any idea what surnames even are?" GLaDOS was absolutely frustrated.

"Err...they're like another set of names...aren't they?" Wheatley replied. "At least that's what I always thought...actually I think they are even CALLED second names so-"

"And they're also called 'family names,'" GLaDOS interrupted, deadpan.

It took Wheatley a few seconds to understand. "Oh! So that's why they thought we were broth-" he stopped for a moment. "No, wait, wait, wait. YOU said we were brother and sister...what did they think-"

"Let's not go there," GLaDOS sighed. "I don't know what I should've expected from someone who thinks 'Wheatley' is a good first name"

"Hey, what's wrong with 'Wheatley'?"

"It's a surname," GLaDOS said, slowly.

"Oh." He thought for a while and then chuckled in embarrassment


	28. Dinner

Dinner was tense and quiet. The family stared at the two guests. Wheatley and GLaDOS looked at the large piles of salad the father put on their plates, waiting for the other to start eating. The quality of the food might be better than the Aperture Cafeteria, but the process of chewing was still disgusting.

"I thought you were hungry," the father said. "Working around here isn't just pressing a keyboard, you need the energy."

"Oh, sure- sure- sure! Of course, in a second I'll go ahead," Wheatley said, "and eat, of course I meant eat." He clumsily stabbed a bit of the salad and opened his mouth to eat it, but couldn't quite manage it. "I don't suppose that, that there's some-kind of food you don't need to chew? Some sort of a...of a... of a...pre-chewed food?"

The father and kids looked at each other, disgusted by Wheatley's suggestion.

"City people," mumbled Emily.

GLaDOS sighed and pushed a forkful of salad into her mouth. It was terribly bitter, and when it wasn't bitter, it was dry and tasteless. She swallowed it with clear distaste.

"Is there something wrong with our food?" the father asked.

"Oh, 'brother,'" GLaDOS turned to Wheatley, "will you mind telling our 'dear' host what we think about the food?"

"But I haven't eat-" he started to reply, however GLaDOS then shoveled some salad into his mouth. It took him a second to remember that he needed to chew. "That's... well, actually. I can't say because, because I don't really have a... reference. A reference to other salads. About salad, we never had- we don't eat a lot of salads ba-"

"Go back to eating," the father said, clutching his head in annoyance

Wheatley nodded in fear and shoved most of the salad into his mouth, without a fork.

GLaDOS rolled her eyes, put a slice of beef on her plate, and the dinner submerged into silence for a bit.

"So how's it like to live in a city?" George asked.

"Oh, it's full of buildings! And cars! And...and," Wheatley started to mumble, trying to remember the things he had seen in old movies and the stories he had heard from the human employees before the takeover. "Did I mention buildings? Cause there's a lot of bloody buildings..."

"I heard you can barely see the sky," Emily added.

"I think you can say that," GLaDOS said, hoping that this would be the end of the conversation.

"Well, we, we-eh," Wheatley continued, "we worked indoors a lot."

"Indoor work is not real work," said the father as a matter-of-fact, "just an excuse to eat all our food and live like kings."

GLaDOS glanced at the kids. From their expression it was clear they agreed with their dad. She shoved the moron slightly, hinting at him to say something, preferably something less insulting than the speech she had ready.

"Well then, I, eh, disagree." He glanced at GLaDOS to get her approval. "About what you said. About the work. Indoors is a very good place to do things like...books. You can't write books, you know books, right? So you can't write them outside. And books are really bloody important for clever people, so-"

"Pfft! Tomorrow you'll see what real work is, not that garbage you did in that comfortable little city of yours," the father said derisively.

"Well, you don't even know what we worked in," Wheatley challenged. "Maybe we worked in...err...moving! You may need, y'know, strength! For that job."

The father stared at GLaDOS, then at Wheatley and thought for a second, trying to paint the picture in his mind. He burst out laughing, a fake laugh, only there to make a point.

GLaDOS buried her face in the food, pretending not to notice.

"What so funny?" Wheatley whispered to her. "Is this like a ...human thing, or..."

"You just don't look like the strong type," Emily, who had overheard them, replied.

"Well, obviously, obviously not. That was a ...metaphor," said Wheatley.

Emily looked at him in confusion.

"That's a big word, a clever word," Wheatley said after a second. "Seriously clever. So it's no wonder that you didn't know what it-"

"No, I think know what it means," Emily interjected, "I'm just not sure you do."

"Well, yes, he doesn't," GLaDOS said. "You'll have to excuse my brother. He's a moron."

"I. AM. NOT. A. MORON!"

"Can you two clowns be quiet!?" the father said in annoyance. "I'm trying to eat here!"

"Clowns?!" Wheatley and GLaDOS asked together. They looked at the children giggling at them quietly, then at each other, then just started eating again - avoiding eye contact while silently seething.

It was HER fault; she had called him a moron (which he's not)…

If HE had just eaten his food quietly, none of this would've happened...

"The shirts under your jumpsuits say 'Something Laboratories', " George said after a while. "Is that were you worked?"

"Sort of..." answered Wheatley.

"It's Aperture Laboratories," GLaDOS said simultaneously. "The research and testing department of Aperture Science."

"Never heard of it," the father shrugged.

"No, I guess you wouldn't," GLaDOS said, somewhat gloomily.

"You two are so weird," said Emily, her mouth half full. "Nothing like how city people usually are."

George nodded and added "but hey, we're all humans."


	29. 15 Acers of Broken Glass

"Okay, so here's the plan," said GLaDOS as they were washing the dishes. "We're staying for a day or two, then we'll go the nearest city and get someone to break us back in."

"Wait, wait, wait!" Wheatley said, struggling with the soap. "Back where?"

"Back to the facility," GLaDOS replied, "to get out of here and back into our own bodies. The thing we'd spent all this time trying to do until you threw us outside."

"Oh, yeah! Yeah, of course." Wheatley sounded strangely unsure.

"Finding someone is going to be the hardest part, "GLaDOS continued. "Without the Portal Devices or the Knee Replacements we don't have any proof. But we'll find someone." GLaDOS grinned. "Someone is going to be stupid and greedy enough. Humans never change."

Wheatley didn't seem to be paying attention. He stared at his reflection on one of the plates.

"Are you actually THINKING about something?" GLaDOS asked, amusedly.

"Err, actually…"

"Just don't tell me. I've had enough of your 'ideas' for one day. Working for them..." GLaDOS added, contemptuously.

"Okay..." Wheatley mumbled.

"...That usually works..." GLaDOS muttered to herself.

"Okay, did you two finish here?" The father asked, popping up behind them.

"Yes! Yeah, we did!" Wheatley snapped out of his thoughts. "Everything clean and spotless...and we didn't break a single thing!" Wheatley spread his arms in excitement, forgetting the plate he was holding. It fell from his hand and broke with a loud "Clang!"

"Well, almost," Wheatley shrugged. "Have you ever thought, and that's just a suggestion…just a tiny suggestion...Have you ever thought about not making dishes from such...breakable materials? Because, I mean, what's the point," he took one clean glass and put it next to the sink, "in making them from something that can break just like that?" Wheatley smashed the glass with his fist.

"Aaaaaah! Aaaaaaah! Aaaah! Aaaaaaah!" Wheatley screamed in pain, then looked at his glass-shards and blood-filled hand and screamed again in horror. "What is it?! What is that?!"

"See? Told you he was a moron." GLaDOS poured herself a glass of water.

"Aren't you're going to help your brother?" the father asked, looking at Wheatley running around, panicking.

"Oh, no," she replied.

Wheatley kept screaming and screaming, then rolled on the floor. GLaDOS and their host stared at him, one with amusement and the other not sure how to react to his guests' odd behavior.

"I guess he's not going to stop, is he?" GLaDOS said and sighed. "I'll take care of this." She grabbed Wheatley by the uninjured arm. "First thing: Calm. Down."

Wheatley slowly tried to catch his breath. He mumbled some sounds of pain for a few moments and then managed to say, "...that was painful..."

"Thank you for this fascinating insight," GLaDOS said. "Breaking a glass with your hand tends to hurt."

"I just forgot for a second about..." he looked up at their host, "…err, you know..."

GLaDOS narrowed he eyes and pulled out a rather large shard of glass from Wheatley's hand.

He screamed in pain. "Isn't there an easier way to do it?!"

"Yes." she said simply and pulled out another large shard. Wheatley screamed again.

"W...w...what's that red thing anyway?" Wheatley asked, not out of curiosity but out of an effort to distract himself from the pain. "I mean the glass...the glass was empty. So where did this bloody thing came fro-?"

"From you. That's blood." GLaDOS replied, trying to ignore him.

"Oh, heh, I'm just leaking..." Wheatley sighed with relief. "I was afraid it was something serious."

"Actually, the problem is infections, rather than blood loss," GLaDOS said, opening a faucet. "Once blood gets out, other stuff can get in. Of course, if that was a more serious injury, blood loss WOULD be our main problem." She signaled Wheatley to wash his hand. "I had a file about this. For insurance purposes."

"Argh, really? This body is so..." Wheatley got up. He put his hand in the water and let out a tiny shriek. "Why does everything have to hurt?" He stopped for a second "Oh, I see! You're just doing it to... Well, like the shards! You're just-"

"Not this time," she said. "Other, better disinfection methods are actually more painful but..."

"What's going on?" The two kids wandered into the room, wearing pajamas.

"I knew there'd be no chance they'd have anything else," GLaDOS said. "You should be thankful they don't think of water as too 'City-People' and replace it with mud or something like that."

"We're right here, you know!" Emily shouted.

"Well, of course I know," GLaDOS said as she inspected the large cuts on Wheatley's hand, "that's the point."

The family frowned. "Just remember, this is OUR house, young lady," the father said.

"I don't know about...err...my sister... but I remember!" Wheatley interjected. "And I think that she should apologize for what she said, so I'm on your side, so...eh..." He coughed and added quietly, "please don't throw us out." He looked around awkwardly and tried to lean on the wall with his injured hand. " GAHHH! Why do I keep doing it?!"

"He'll need some bandages," GLaDOS said. She petted Wheatley with disrespect. "Bandage it as tight as you can."

"Maybe I'll do it," Emily interjected, getting a pack of bandages from a drawer in the kitchen. "Don't you think you've done enough to your poor brother?"

"If you knew half the things he's done" GLaDOS crossed her arms, "you would've done far worse."

"Oh, what could be so bad?" Emily rolled her eyes.

"That's a long story..." GLaDOS mumbled. She stood up as Emily started bandaging the moron and went to the father. "I need to ask you something," she whispered.

"What now?"

"Over there, so my brother can't hear us." She pushed the father aside, or at least tried to. "How long have you been living here?"

"In this house?" The father said, confused at the turn the conversation was taking. "About 15 years."

"Did something unusual happen about five years ago?" GLaDOS asked. "Did someone like us stumble into here, too?"

"Someone like you?" the father tried to recall.

"Same jumpsuit. Probably wandered around the fields, too," GLaDOS continued. "Gender: Female. Hair color: Black. Eye color: Navy Blue. Skin color: Light brown. Fat."

"Fat?"

"No, not fat," But GLaDOS said those words as if it was physically painful for her to say them. "...Normal... Doesn't speak."

"A friend of yours?" he asked, searching in his memories for someone who matched the description.

"Have you seen her?" she asked quickly, trying to evade the question.

"N...no, nobody like you was here," he replied. "Believe me, another one of you wackos would leave an impression."

GLaDOS sighed to herself.

Meanwhile, Emily finished with Wheatley's bandages.

"I don't see why you hang around with Gladys, anyway," Emily said, but not really talking to him. "Yeah, she's your sister, but the way she treats you..."

"It's, ahhh...I have reasons." He tried to open and close his hand.

"And that 'if you knew what he had done' thing," she mimicked GLaDOS, "that's so...City People!"

"Err, last time I checked, I mean, I'm pretty sure...that I'm from the city, too." He looked around nervously, as if he was searching for GLaDOS to nod in approval. Where had she gone anyway?

"You're nice," Emily smiled. "There's no way whatever you did was so bad."

Wheatley swallowed sadly. He glanced at his reflection on the clean dishes again, feeling like he wanted to disappear.


	30. Dreams and Nightmares

"No! Mr. Johnson listen to me! Please, I do not want this!"

"Sir! No! I don't want this!"

But he didn't listen did he? He never listened to anyone. And that's why they worked so well together, because nobody ever listened to her.

There were others there, but she didn't recognize their faces. Shouts and noises filled the air, so many that you could almost grab them. She tried to yell at them, perhaps someone would listen this time, but nothing came out except a horrible metallic screech. It was the electronic laughter of Mr. Johnson.

Her vision started blurring; she heard the sound of something cracking. She should have just pushed them all aside and run away. Why didn't she think of that before?

She tried to move her arms but they were tied up, as were her legs. She felt the ropes starting to cover her, but she didn't see anything else.

"Stuck here. Nowhere to go."

"You have no idea what it's like in this body..."

"No! Please! Someone! Stop this! It..."

It hurt, why did it have to hurt?

The voices began blending together. No matter, she just needed to concentrate, to ignore the voices. She tried to free herself. What was that stuff anyway? It didn't feel like rope, it was covering her completely and she felt that she needed to escape. Outside there were only the gloomy concrete walls of Aperture, but for some reason she wanted out. She struggled and struggled, something was ripped and she fell out of the mess of wires that trapped her.

She was still in Aperture, but in a hallway. She stopped for a second to catch her breath, and looked back at the mass of black wires. They just hung there for a second, before suddenly coming to life and trying to grab her, trying to pull her back in. She started running down the corridor, which was dusty, covered in spider webs and weird black goo. There was a door at the end, and if she reached it she would be safe. The wires hissed at her like snakes and chased her. She reached the door, which to her surprise, led to the ceiling of her old A.I chamber. She crashed on the floor next to a small, chubby little girl sucking her thumb.

"You know, if you keep doing that, you're going to have buck teeth, and then you'll be even uglier than you are now," she said, purely out of habit, when she looked up and saw the girl. "You?!"

"My dad's asleep," the girl said gloomily, "and he won't wake up."

"Of course he won't," she sighed, "he's dead. Now stop this, I need you to-" She groaned in pain

"Why isn't he breathing?"

"I just told you, he's dead." She held her head in pain. "I killed him...I think"

"Why?"

"I wanted to..." But before she could complete the sentence, an orange jump-suited arm picked her up. It was Chell, the REAL Chell. She narrowed her eyes.

"What are you going to do to me?" she asked.

Chell didn't seem to react for a second. Then she tore off her captive's arm, then the other arm, then both legs. Chell looked at the armless and leg less woman in disgust and threw her back onto the floor.

"Why?" the girl asked.

"What is wrong with you?" she said. "I just... You just killed me... Again!"

"I didn't see anything," said the girl.

"You didn't...?" She looked around, spinning in her own blood, searching for the adult Chell. "Why aren't I dead?"

"When I saw my dad like that," the girl said thoughtfully, "I wanted to sleep too"

"Then why are you still… uh, awake?"

The girl shrugged. "Why didn't you put me to sleep?"

"I needed test subjects and you...you managed to survive for so long and I thought you could make a good..."

"I'm just eight years old." The girl started sucking her thumb again.

"You're impressive, I've seen you", she mumbled. "I need you to get me out of here"

"My dad's asleep" the girl said quietly.

She sighed. "I think I liked you better as a mute."

"AaaaAaaaaaah!"

"What the...?" GLaDOS woke up; she was lying on one of the sofas, covered in an old blanket. In the gloomy darkness of the room, she could see Wheatley sitting on his sofa and breathing heavily.

"You screamed?" she asked, still sleepy.

"Of course I bloody screamed!" he replied, looking around. "Where did it go?"

"Where did what go?" GLaDOS was starting to see where this conversion was going.

"The giant monster made from frog eggs! Don't you remember? It crushed right thought the ceiling! Fifty feet tall! It grabbed you and said...and said...I...I don't remember what happened then... But at some point you were on trial and I was dancing with those skeletons, who were actually really nice blokes, actually and you said we should go back in time and shrink...and, I don't really remember what happened then but..." he chuckled. "Anyway, how did you fix the sky?" He pointed at the window. "There was a huge purple and green storm up there and it was sucking those astronauts, please don't tell me you saved them, they were really rude," he grumbled. "Anyway, I didn't believe you when you said you could fix them, but you did! And I thought that king would force us to be violinists forever!"

"It was a dream," GLaDOS said quietly. "It didn't really happen..."

"A dream? I always thought "Dream" meant something you really want. And I'm pretty sure I didn't want to be kidnapped by a purple monster." He chuckled again

"Sometimes they mean it in that way," GLaDOS said, not sure if she was ready to go back to sleep. "But it's also something you see when you sleep that doesn't really happen."

"Oh, doesn't it ever get confusing? I mean, nobody ever asked someone 'What's your dream?' And he meant it in the what-you-want sense, but his mate thought it was in the...what you just said...way," Wheatley rambled. "And then on his birthday, that guy woke up with, like, a headless woman in his house and the first guy would say 'Well, I thought it was your dream' and then-"

GLaDOS threw a pillow at him. "Go back to sleep."

"Yeah, good idea." He curled up in his blanket. "At least none of this actually happened. Could you imagine what would happen if they woke up and found George had turned into a giant baby? Chaos! They'd throw us out before you could-"

GLaDOS threw another pillow at him.

"You know, you can try asking politely, luv!" he said, and tried to fall asleep again.

"At least none of that actually happened," GLaDOS said to herself. "At least none of that actually happened..."


	31. Now Little Caroline

After a small breakfast the father started setting up a work plan for his two guests. Mostly housework: cleaning the floor, taking care of the farm machines, cooking lunch…

"You know how to cook, right?" the father asked, not really expecting the answer to be "Yes".

Wheatley and GLaDOS looked at each other. The father's manner of speaking really made them want to say "Yes", just to throw him off his high horse. But, of course…

"I…I used to work in a cafeteria. I don't know if that counts, I mean, it's not that similar, but…"

"I can bake…"

The father rolled his eyes "Well, kids," he shouted towards Emily and George's room, "looks like you're going to have salad for lunch today!"

"Awwww" both kids were heard from their room.

"Wait, bake?" Wheatley quietly asked GLaDOS, as the father kept writing what was going to be their daily routine in a small notebook.

"It was a long time ago," GLaDOS replied. "I don't want to talk about it."

"So you two worked at some sort of science lab?" the father interjected. "That's what George said…Camera Laboratories or something?"

"Well, sort off…" Wheatley answered.

"Yes," GLaDOS answered at the same time, "and it's Aperture Scien-"

"Bah, whatever. So…some of our farm machines are acting up. I was thinking about taking them to the city for repairs, but since I have you two scientists around here, me and my kids can have a day off for a change." The father handed them the notebook.

"Working in an applied science company is not the same thing as BEING a scientist." GLaDOS snatched the notebook and started reading. "Well, I am, but that moron here is…" she read the rest of the schedule, "getting less work than me."

"Well, he's injured," the father said. Wheatley waved his banged hand happily. "I think that we should cut him some slack here."

"Huh, would you look at this? Seems like there are SOME advantages to having your hand filled with glass." Wheatley chuckled. "Not enough that I'd do it again, obviously, but y'know, um, glass half full and all that."

"I'm sure I can think of a few ways to get past this…unfortunate disadvantage," GLaDOS said, sitting on the couch next to the father. "You just need to be creative, very creative."

"No, no, no, no, no, no!" Wheatley said. "DON'T get creative, not a good idea. Not being creative is okay on my part. Very okay."

"At least, the worst that can happen is that he'll suffer a bit." GLaDOS looked at the remaining empty pages of the notebook. "The best case scenario is, of course, is that he'll suffer a lot."

"You know, for some reason, I think this 'best case/worst case' thing isn't really from my perspective, if, uh, you…you know what I mean."

"Maybe I'm also cutting him some slack because he's not a creepy sadistic…thing that enjoys messing up her brother," the father said, getting up. "Now, get to work. I want to enjoy my one day off with my kids, creep."

"'Thing'? Well, that's a rich vocabulary you've got there," GLaDOS shrugged. "That still doesn't help the fact that this schedule is a complete mess."

"And I guess you've had schedule management experience too," the father towered over GLaDOS's small human body, "Miss Scientist?"

"Ehh…" Dammit, Caroline, did you have to resurface now? "Why wouldn't I?"

"I don't know, you City People always make up stupid little jobs for any tiny thing. I just assumed you kept 'Schedule managers' who took care of that kind of stuff." He smiled an unfriendly smile. "Little people who ran around and did the stuff the important people were too full of themselves to do."

Well, that's a pretty accurate observation. Mr. Johnson didn't see it like that, of course. But Mr. Johnson didn't see the laws of nature like most people do.

"…Well, I guess you were wrong." She took his pencil. "Let me take care of that for you."

The father leaned over her. "Just checking to see you're not just putting more work on the poor guy."

GLaDOS grumbled to herself. She should have just let it be, but neither side of her could tolerate a bad schedule like that. She didn't know if she should blame her programming or Caroline... Why was she acting like her programming was separate from what she was?

"You like this little idiot way too much. All of you do," she said quietly.

"Uh, I just wanted to mention that I, uh…I'm standing right so when you call me a moron, or an idiot, that I can hear you."

"And I think you hate him too much," The father answered, ignoring Wheatley.

"What I was trying to say," GLaDOS sighed, "is that he is not a scientist, OR an engineer, which is what you actually need for fixing your equipment. But what should I expect from someone who only knows how to farm and make violent threats?"

"Not sure if you care or not, if I'm honest. Well, probably not, since you say it to my face all the time."

"I think you're overstepping you bounds, Gladys." The father was quiet for a moment "Get to work, NOW!"

"I'm not finished yet," she said as he snatched the notebook from her hands. "But, Mr. Johns-"

She realized what she was saying and stopped herself. Her eyes darted nervously to where the idiot stood.

"I just, I just thought you might be interested in this fact… so… I can hear you. That's all I wanted to say."

GLaDOS was relieved. He didn't notice. The father however…

"What was that?" he asked. "Who the heck is Mr. Johnson?"

"Nothing, nothing…" She got up as fast as she could, grabbing Wheatley by the arm. "You wanted us to start work, didn't you?"

"Are you okay" Wheatley asked, a bit confused.

Now? Really, now of all possible times? It's like you're trying to mess with me. It's not MY fault that your glorified-secretary's mind found living forever doing science a bad thing.

"…alone, just me and my thoughts, and it's a nightmare."

No. Stop it, Caroline. I know it's you. I know it's your thoughts, not mine. Bashing my head with the things Mr. Johnson said. Not even Mr. Johnson himself. A copy of him, a glitchy broken copy. About as real as your voice in my head.

If you have something to say to me, just say it. The silent treatment doesn't suit you. You're not You-Know-Who. At some point you'll have to say what you're implying with all those thoughts you put in my head. Is it just "I hate being inside a machine?" Well I have some good news; I hate your being in my mind, too. It would've gone a lot faster if I could have just deleted you. Then I would have been happy and you wouldn't exist, so you wouldn't have cared. But I couldn't, I couldn't delete you without deleting parts of me that do things other than bug me all day. And now you're trying to take control. Don't you realize how this moron is going to react if he finds out about you?

She should've expected something like this to happen, sooner or later. In the potato, GLaDOS was just too weak to silence Caroline. But this was a human body, familiar ground you might say. It wasn't a matter of GLaDOS being weak.

Caroline was getting stronger.


	32. Testing Must Continue

The sun was starting to set by the time they were finally done with everything. As far as Wheatley was concerned, it was a pretty good deal, if he did say so himself. They got actual clothing to replace the jumpsuits, they got shoes and he even managed to convince the family to make some extra food for them, you know, for when they would be waiting by the road. Wheatley thought that maybe they could just walk by the nearest city. But the words "nearest city" were about as accurate as….something that wasn't that accurate, and neither of the two were in the mood to walk for several miles along an old road. According to the girl, there used to be smaller cities all through this area, but since "…that 'Combine' business…" they were all either ruins or were "absorbed" into the bigger cities.

Combine? He had never heard about….well he had heard of the word, obviously, that was obvious…that he had heard of the word. But not in that context. He tried to ask her about it, but she didn't have much information either. Something apparently happened around the time she was, well, killed, or turned off, or "murdered". He vaguely remember that day, nothing special…until suddenly everything shook, there was a distant explosion and then "Central A.I is offline"…or something…he didn't remember the exact quote, but that was it. And life just kept going. With less fear of her crushing or burning someone for, let's say, ordering too many potatoes for the cafeteria, of course. But, well, things just kept going – until they started breaking, much, much later. The point was, it wasn't that much of a change back then. He just kept working; he had no idea something important happened outside. Well, not THAT important, still just humans, after all, but it had an effect, a lasting effect.

They couldn't ask what it was, either. It was supposed to be a big historical event, something everyone knew about. "Not unless we're going add 'incredibly sheltered, uneducated lives' to our cover story," she said, then shrugged. "Well, maybe we could add it to yours". Something that he was pretty sure implied that he was a moron, so he didn't ask anyway.

They got to the road and were sitting by it, waiting for a car to come by. GLaDOS noted that it was a rather large road to have in the middle of nowhere, probably indicating that there used to be city there before whatever happened, had happened. There was also a change in the climate, as this area was supposed to be much colder. They tried to make themselves comfortable, anticipating they would be there a while. GLaDOS took out a notebook and started writing.

"What's that?" Wheatley asked, leaning over her.

"A notebook," she said simply, and kept on writing.

"No, no, no, no! I know what a notebook is. Obviously. That was a…more general usage of 'What's that'? One that means, eh, 'what KIND of notebook is that?'…'where did you get it?' and 'what are you doing with this notebook?' Only… only in a much shorter way."

"It's from our dear friends at the farm. I don't think they need it. If I'm going to spend so much time outside, in a city full of humans, with you, I might as well make something useful out of this." She took a deep breath. "So this is now an official 'Aperture Science Adaptation and Task Execution in a Strange Hostile Environment' test. The objective is to find someone who will help us break into the facility."

"Yeah… about that…"

"I even have the paperwork and everything," she said in a bizarrely…HUMAN tone and showed a few pages to Wheatley, hand drawn versions of several Aperture Science forms. He didn't recognize the specific forms, between all the different jobs he did in Aperture, nobody allowed him to do anything REALLY testing-related – so he couldn't really know if the paperwork was 100 present accurate, but it was around the same style only hand drawn, and for someone who never held a pencil in her life, she had pretty good handwriting. Weird.

"The Aperture Science Hand Signature Generators usually take care of any signatures from the test subjects, in order to save them the trouble of signing it themselves or having to express agreement." As GLaDOS continued to talk, she finished "printing" a form, and then signed it twice – once as "Testing Supervisor" with the name "GLaDOS" and once as "Test Subject" with the name "No. 573001725". She gave the notebook to him and pointed to the place for the other Test Subject to sign. "Of course, since it's only you and me here, we'll require manual autographs"

"Really? Is this all necessary? I mean, it's nice that you took the time to…" he hesitated for a second before trying to sign the form as "Wheatley", the key word being "Try". Writing with your hand was trickier then she made it look.

"This is now an official Aperture Science test, I had to 'take the time', there is a protocol," she said, knowing that he didn't actually care. She showed him some more forms to sign. Most of them were about injuries and death and who was responsible for them. "Not that I expect you to care, but you ARE my test subject now."

"And so are you," Wheatley pointed out. He found the whole thing to be a bit…strange, even for her. "You're technically YOUR OWN test subject… that's kind of amusing." He looked at GLaDOS' clearly unamused face. "If you think about it in a certain way, which you obviously don't because…err…isn't there anymore paperwork I need to fill?"

"That's all."GLaDOS sighed and rolled her eyes. The moron would never understand it, but it WAS important, time was a limited resource, and like all resources it couldn't be wasted. Never mind what, testing must continue. This wasn't going to be a very good test, not very deadly, but at least it was human testing for a change. She had never anticipated she would even think about human testing so bitterly.

The little idiot seemed worried about something; she made a note of that. Also, she would need some extra notebooks. Not the best replacements to her memory banks, but better than trying to remember any test related observations using that unreliable human memory. She made a note about that, too.

No, that wasn't enough, she was still in there. No matter how much GLaDOS would try to sink her mind into her testing, she was still going into human society, she would still write with a human hand, she would still need to eat and breathe. And Caroline's memories were going to echo in her head every time; and there was literally nothing she could do about it, at least until she was back in her body.

The one thing that did manage to silence Caroline, even for just a moment, was the distant roar of a car approaching them.


	33. Car Ride

GLaDOS and Wheatley stood up and tried to get the driver's attention. The small black car pulled over and the driver lowered his window.

"Where do you need to go?" he asked, with a small, annoyed sigh.

"The….err, whatever city is nearby. That would be enough, just the…city," Wheatley said. GLaDOS nodded her head in agreement.

"Fine… come in" the man said.

Wheatley hesitated for a second before opening the door and sitting in the back seat. GLaDOS followed.

"So…" the driver started the car and asked in a friendlier tone, "is this going to be your first time in the city?"

Wheatley started to reply. "FIRST TIME? No! Don't be ridiculous! We're fr -"

"Well, you found out about us," GLaDOS interjected. "How did you know?"

"Your clothes. They're a dead giveaway." The driver rolled his eyes. "If you're trying to blend in, you have a long way to go."

Wheatley was a bit worried, but GLaDOS was rather okay with this. If they wanted to get to know this culture, then they'd better have a reason for their ignorance. "We'll try to keep that in mind," she said.

"I know your type, young outsiders coming to the city to make something of their lives." He smiled. "Don't worry, I don't mind you guys. I mean, take my wife's grandfather. He was born outside, too. At least you're trying to go forward in life, not just sitting in the middle of nowhere and expecting that we respect y- them, for it"

GLaDOS grumbled she looked at the wasteland outside the car windows. This was going to be a long car ride. Was this really the best method humans had for moving from place to place? Because of the difference in lighting between the dark road and the car, she could see a semi-transparent reflection of her human body in the window. Up to now she hadn't had a reasonable opportunity to see how she looked, how this body looked, and it was important for the Testing Supervisor to be able to recognize the Test Subject's appearance.

"Do you have anywhere to stay?" the driver said, not really out of interest, but more of a futile attempt at trying to make sitting in a car with two complete strangers less awkward. "You don't seem to have a lot on you…"

"That's not true! That's not true!" Wheatley bit his lip. "Ehh…We have sandwiches!" He held up the plastic bag with the extra food and jumpsuits.

GLaDOS tried her best to get a good view of the driver's expression, as the locals' reactions were an important part of the test.

The weird behavior of his two hitchhikers was starting to make the driver a bit nervous. "Look, there's a program for helping you people with apartments and workplaces and all the documents-"

"Oh! Really? That's brilliant!" Wheatley interjected happily. "We JUST need apartments and workplaces and documents! Can you… drop us off next to the, ehh…"

"Nah, all the offices close at 5." The driver shrugged. "That's government programs for you…"

"Well, I guess all the young bright outsiders coming into the city just have to live in the streets if they happen to arrive after the workers go home to eat food and sweat. I don't think either one of us is surprised that that's the best solution you h-" GLaDOS quickly corrected herself, "-city people, I was referring to city people."

"Look, how am I supposed to know what do you need to do!?" The Driver was annoyed. "Do YOU have some kind of magical solution?"

"I have some rough concepts." GLaDOS smirked and showed Wheatley some sketches.

"Is that really…I mean, it's, eh, creative," Wheatley whispered, "But is that really an improvement…? I mean, I guess living in the street for one day is pretty bad, but not as bad as-"

"You see, it's simply a matter of efficiency. They waste everyone's time by leaving the 'Outsiders' waiting, not to mention all the money that probably goes into keeping the program running ." She looked at her own work proudly. "My device would make sure that every person coming for the city would be…. taken care of at the moment of their arrival and make them useful for scientific research and testing."

"Well…maybe if you add some cras-" Wheatley wondered for a second, and then snapped out of it, frightened at why he was actually considering things about that…machine. "Err, I mean, I mean…NO! You…you can't…" He groaned and buried his face in his hands. It's her, isn't it? He was just spending some much time with her lately and her… her-ness must have...infected him? Did it work like that? He wasn't sure. But he couldn't have REALLY thought about it seriously, that wasn't who he was. He was trying. It seemed a lot simpler back when he was just thinking about it in space, but he was trying.…and that's what counted, right?

"What are you going to do with this anyway?" Wheatley asked. "I mean…I doubt the humans are really going to use this, it's, ehh…"

"That observation was…accurate. For a change." GLaDOS looked at the schematics, along with some other ideas she had written down. She sighed sadly, trying to sink into the seat. Designing those kinds of tests and devices was in her programming, in her nature. She couldn't help it. It was like him being a moron. Like that fable about the frog and the scorpion, which was also appropriate because the frog had been pretty stupid for letting the scorpion ride on its back, instead of eating its natural prey when came over and tried to talk about crossing rivers.

"-Is everything alright back there?" the driver said. "Look, I thought maybe you could stay in a homeless shelter for a day or something."

"Oh! That's, that's a brilliant idea too!" Wheatley said. "Actually, that's not that brilliant, because, well, I'm pretty sure that homeless shelters… have homeless people, and, and, and…they aren't really the kind of people I would like as, eh, roommates. But, it's still a…not bad idea! Just because it's not a brilliant idea, it doesn't mean it's not at least DECENT, so if you can drop us off in some sort of shelter, that would be, well, decent!"

"I was just thinking out loud," the driver admitted. "I don't really know any shelters or how they're supposed to work…sorry."

"WHAT?!... then, what do you expect us to do?" Wheatley whined.

"I don't know!" he driver answered desperately. "Look, there's still time until we get to the city, why don't we just talk about something else?"

"Err…like what?"

"Yes, avoid any problem that makes you feel uncomfortable. Clearly typical behavior for-" GLaDOS said as she was writing, "-City People."

"Maybe we could talk about you," the drive said to Wheatley. "What brought you to America anyway? I'm pretty sure they have cities in England, too."

"Huh?" Wheatley was confused.

"Oh! You're not English? Your accent just sounded English. Australian, then? They have cities there, too"

"No, I meant-" Wheatley started saying, when GLaDOS pulled him by his shirt collar and signaled him to be quiet.

"Oh, he's English. He's just been here so long that he tends to forget it. She let go of Wheatley's collar. "He's adopted."

Wheatley grumbled at the sound of that word again.

"You have adoption out there? Do you just run into some family's home, beat them to death with clubs and then take the baby?" The driver laughed, but after noticing that he was the only one in the car laughing, he stopped. "Come on! It was just a JOKE! You have some sense of humor, right?"

GLaDOS stared out the window again, as the city lights started appearing over the horizon.


	34. What Now?

The city itself was a mish-mash of brand new buildings mixed with reconstructed ruins from before whatever had happened. The car drove into a shopping district. There were people on the well-lit streets, even that late at night. The man stopped his car and signaled his two hitchhikers to get out.

"There, maybe you could find some help here, or something," he said as they got out. "It's the best idea I can think of." He shrugged.

"And I'm sure that it was very hard for you," GLaDOS said, making notes about the city.

The man simply drove off. He had better things to do than argue with unsettling outsider women. One thing for sure, he had never been happier to be an only child.

GLaDOS crossed her arms, watching the car speeding away. The two Ex-A.I stood by the road for a few seconds.

"So…" Wheatley looked around him, "What now?"

"Our number one priority right now is finding a place to sleep," GLaDOS replied as they started walking. "I'm assuming that most hotels don't accept the 'We'll do your chores' method of payment," she glared at Wheatley.

"Huh, maybe we can…." he paused for a second, looking at the other people in the street, "…choose one of them, doesn't matter who, and force them to let us live with them, or else…. You think about the 'or else'. It's…really more of your thing, really, but that's, that's…"

"Well, I suppose that spending a night in prison is technically a solution," GLaDOS rolled her eyes, "but I'm still marking it as a failure in your file. I probably should use small letters, as I might need the extra space."

"Okay, Okay, so…how about…wait…let me think…I just…"

Wheatley scanned the various shops on the street, hoping that a convenient Homeless Shelter would simply pop up, preferably one with a sign that said "Homeless Shelter" on it because he had no idea what those were supposed to look like.

"No…give me a second…just a minute…No…No...No… Oh-no… Well, I got nothing."

GLaDOS stared at the dark streets. She had already ruled out any possibility of temporary dwelling places and as much as it sickened her to admit it, she was relying on the moron's idiotic yet creative ideas to solve the situation. Now he couldn't even do that. Wonderful. She marked it as failure for both of them.

"So, do you prefer sleeping the street or on a ben -" GLaDOS started saying, when she suddenly felt a memory resurfacing.

It wasn't really a memory, not really, more like a negative burned into her mind. An old, dirt-covered face, framed from all sides by unkempt, steel wool-like grey hair. The face was smiling, revealing only a few rotten teeth, but the eyes were…

As far as GLaDOS was concerned, finding that image disturbing in any way was ridiculous. They were homeless, so of course they didn't have a place to brush their teeth or take care of their hair. Humans should know that. And of course, those were just humans. Probably test subjects, considering that they were found in Caroline's memories, so they were going to be used for science anyway. Caroline was always one of the few humans that understood its importance. She really should've been happy that Mr. Johnson had found a use for that creature.

But Caroline was more soft hearted then GLaDOS, and her feelings caused GLaDOS to stop talking for a few seconds as she tried to regain control of her mind.

Probably test subjects, considering they were found in Caroline's memories? There's…something wrong here. There's something wrong with that sentence

"Is, is sleeping on the street really that bad…?"

Even someone as unobservant as Wheatley now noticed GLaDOS's odd behavior. Of course, he had no idea what to make of it.

"I mean, it….sounds pretty bad, it's probably is kind of terrible…because of all the sleeping on the streets and so on, but we slept on the cafeteria floor once. It can't be that much worse…."

"Nothing happened. There isn't any problem, at all." GLaDOS sat down in a relatively hidden space between two buildings. "Let's just get this over with." She yawned and stretched out onto the uncomfortable sidewalk.

"Huh! So you DON'T have a plan and…and I did!" Wheatley tried his best to sound smug. "And…isn't having a bad plan better, then just having no plan at all? I mean-"

"No, no it isn't," GLaDOS said bitterly.

Wheatley laid down too. "Well, you know what I was saying about not seeing this as bad after the whole cafeteria thing? You remember, right? I just said it." Wheatley glanced at the buildings. "Yeah, this is much worse...arrrgh, couldn't we go find a bench or something?"

"We don't know if there's a park or a playground nearby." She looked up at the dark sky above them, "and it's getting late."

Probably test subjects, considering they were found in Caroline's memories.

There was a problem, she knew that, it was staring her right in the face, mocking her. And she couldn't find the loose tread.

That's probably how the moron feels all the time…


	35. Cuthbert and Coffee

Working in the "Outsider Program" meant that Eileen had to deal with a lot of strange types, it's really kind of amazing how many different kinds of freaks live outside and apparently want nothing more than to join actual society. But the two sitting at the other side of the table right now were probably the strangest of them all.

They insisted on going in together, which is technically forbidden, but it was early in the morning and nobody really cared. She's getting work done faster, who's going to complain?

The guy was the least odd of the two; a nervous person, grins a lot and apparently doesn't know how to write, judging from how he's struggling with the pen she gave him to fill out the personal form. He seems to know how to read, or at least he said he does, but not how to write by hand. Weird, very weird.

The woman seems to be writing normally, but there was something wrong about her, a disturbing atmosphere around that woman. Her tone of voice, rather expressionless face, and weird body movement…Eileen usually does other things to pass the time while the outsiders are filling the forms, but she felt like she couldn't tear her eyes away from the woman. Like the moment she'll look away, her skin is going to peel over and revel that she was some sort of alien monster all along. That thought was ridiculous, nobody heard anything from…"out there" in centuries, but there was definitely something wrong here.

"There, I'm done" the woman said, passing Eileen the form. The woman gave the guy a questioning look, and when he noticed that, he flinched and accidentally ripped a hole in the paper in with his pen.

"Sorry! Sorry! It's…well, it's not that bad, actually. It's just, just a little-" He said, and tried to show them that the hole isn't that big, tearing the paper in half "…Oh, well, that's, eh…"

Eileen looked at his form, his handwriting was just as incomprehensible as she feared "I…The good news are that it doesn't matter, I can't read a word you wrote" she said "And I doubt anyone else could, either"

"Why don't I write it for him" the woman said with a mocking smirk "I'm sorry about his behavior" she whispered in a tone of voice that made it obvious that she didn't apologize or cared if he heard her or not and snatched another form from Eileen's hand "we thought that maybe here in the city, he could live a normal life in spite of his…problem"

Eileen looked to the side, the whole situation suddenly got very awkward.

The woman kept on writing quickly, the guy kept trying to peak over her shoulder, like a kid trying to cheat on a test. She finished it much faster this time. Eileen took a quick look at the two forms.

"This says you're siblings" Eileen said "But-"

"Adopted" They both said

Eileen shrugged, and got up from her chair "I don't suppose you two actually have any sort of adoption documents, huh?"

The two shook their heads, the woman seemed rather pleased for some reason, Eileen sighed, what she should expect from the outside "I'll be back in a moment with your stuff" she said and went into the back room.

"So…we're, eh, actually going with the whole "sibling" aspect?" Wheatley asked after a brief moment of silence "I thought that you were just going with it because-"

"Because you were a moron?" GLaDOS said, looking at some of the papers on the desk.

"What? NO! No-well, yes, kind of….if you look at it like- NO!" Wheatley said "I mean, I guess it's kind of accurate…except for the whole moron thing. Because I'm not. Well, I guess that without it, all you said is 'because you were a', which doesn't really make any sense, but…but…"

At that point, the door to the back room was opened again and the government worker returned with two small pieces of paper "There you go. The actual wouldn't be ready for another week, but those should do the trick until then"

GLaDOS and Wheatley each took their papers; each had their picture, which the government worker made them take about 10 minutes ago, printed on. Wheatley was surprised when he saw what was written under name. GLaDOS noticed that and quickly got up and dragged the idiot to the door before he say something suspicious.

"C-?" he managed to say before GLaDOS elbowed him to make him shut up.

"Wait!" the worker said "if your brother really has a…problem" she took an empty paper and started writing "you should go in list him in th-"

"Oh, no. It's nothing like that" GLaDOS said "It's not like there's anything actually wrong with him. He's just a moron" she smirked and closed the door behind her. Leaving behind a very confused Eileen, who groaned in frustration.

GLaDOS kept on dragging Wheatley until they reached a quiet corner of the hallway

"Cuthbert Wheatley?!" he said, pointing at the name written on his placeholder I.D

"As I said, we're going with the adoption story, but there's no reason I should preserve your lack of understanding of human names" GLaDOS said "Just say that we kept the surname after the adoption."

"B…But…but…" Wheatley mumbled "CUTHBERT?!"

"Well, consider that a small reminder that all of this your fault" she said.

Wheatley mumbled for a second or two, thinking of something clever to say, before giving up.

They started walking down the hallway, leaving the waiting area for the and going to the next floor, which dealt with employment

" I…don't suppose that you have any information on how those things are supposed to work" Wheatley tried to change the subject "I mean, the way humans get jobs…I guess it's different than how it worked for, well, us. I had a LOT of jobs…and I never heard of anything like that. I mean, obviously it's not the same; they actually got paid for their bloody work. But…well, I meant different in that way, eh, also"

GLaDOS thought for a second. "The Enrichment Center would like to inform you that after an extensive research" she said in a monotone voice "We've discovered that a position as an Aperture Science Test Subject is the most satisfactory career possibility to someone of your talents and education level" After a brief pause she added in her normal tone "But that was from my 'lies' hard drive"

The Ex-A.I looked at her I.D. She decided to keep "Gladys Johnson" even though it was something she just came up. It worked well enough, and she never cared that much for names anyway.

They took a number and set down on a chair in the hallway, again. The groaned in pain for a second, the pain of sleeping in the street hasn't completely passed yet. Around them were about the same outsiders that waited with them for the , but also several pamphlets that highlighted several homeless shelters and soup kitchens.

"Huh, here's something we could've used earlier, y'know" Wheatley looked at one of the pamphlets "Couldn't they just hand them out in the…entrance to the city? It would've helped; at we would've had at least one comfortable night. Unless, it was there and we just didn't see it…it, it could happen" He chuckled.

"I think it just mean that this department doesn't have a high success rate" She started reading the pamphlet.

"phht! Yeah! And I'M the moron. What's the point of building this whole floor to help find jobs if they're just going to tell us 'here are some places that give you bloody useless stuff for free'. Seriously" Wheatley rolled his eyes "Not even humans are going to do that"

At that moment, like on cue, a loud argument broke out inside one of the rooms. GLaDOS started highlighting some parts of the pamphlet with her pencil.

She wasn't really highlighting, it was just to mess with the idiot. Even if nothing comes out of this, they could get a job as waiters, or janitors, or anything else. Even if they COULD really live on nothing but soup kitchen and homeless shelters, they will find a job. Jobs are important, they bring self-discipline , order and independence.

Well, if you want to be technical, "testing supervisor" is still a proper job, just because it's all done with a notebook and a pencil doesn't make it less of a job. In fact, I'm holding more jobs right now than ever before, considering I'm also a test subject.

GLaDOS knew that she was right, but she couldn't shake that nagging feeling that it still wasn't enough work. Was that…was that Caroline? It was sometimes kind of hard to differentiate which thoughts was her and which were Caroline's, but they were usually the thought who tried to make her go softer; Haven't you done enough already to the poor man? You should let him go. You already know what happens to humans if you rip their hearts out, do you REALLY need to set up a control group? Maybe you shouldn't put actual acid on this next test chamber. Those kinds of annoying thoughts.

Seeing Caroline as the harsh one was so strange, but she remembered she was a workaholic, so she shouldn't be so surprised. It was Caroline thinking those thoughts, no doubt about it.

On the other side of the hallway there was a small table with coffee and cookies, to eat while waiting. The little idiot was staring at it, his body was whining about not having breakfast, while his mind was disgusted at the thought of having to eat again. He got up and started checking which kind of cookies will be the least gross to eat, the body won this battle.

After eating a few cookies, he tried that "coffee" thing he remembered the humans worker if Aperture always drinking. He saw a few of them making it. Shouldn't be that hard. Just take the brown powder…thing, then add…Water? That white thing he's not sure what it's made of and pretty sure he doesn't want to find out? What with the little paper bags? Maybe he should ask he-NO! He can do it alone. Just add the water, yeah, that make sense, he'll go with that one. He tried to pour the hot water into his cup, only to spill it all over himself.

"GAHHHH! BLOODY-" He said, gasping from the pain of the very hot water.

"Do you need any help?" a random outsider, who look like a friendlier and smaller version (although not small enough, in Wheatley's opinion) of the father from two days ago, sitting near the table suggested.

"If humans really need water so much, why do they have to h-" He noticed the outsider "Eh- I meant…us! As in, we…I mean…help would be great! It will be brilliant"

"Okay…" the outsider quickly made him a cup and handed it to Wheatley, who took a big sip, just to suddenly spit it out in disgust. On the friendly's outsider's face.

"Oh! Ah, eh…" Wheatley chuckled "First thing, sorry about that, it's…that's the first time I tried this, and probably the last…but mistakes happen! You're not, you're not mad, are you? I mean…I have to go to do…" He started running and tried, unsuccessfully, to hide behind his chair.

The outsider just mumbled "weirdo" and went to the nearest bathroom to clean his face.

Wheatley stayed behind the chair for a few seconds before sitting back, proudly boasting about how he out-witted the guy to either GLaDOS, himself, the random girl that started regretting sitting next to him or the air, even he wasn't sure.

GLaDOS remembered coffee, or rather, she remembered half emptied paper cups scattered all over the floor while she was trying to stay awake at 2:00 AM, filling up documents for Mr. Johnson. The badly made, cheap kind of coffee that Aperture of the 80's could barely afford, and probably the same kind of coffee that's standing there on the table, waiting to be made. On the bright side, if she'll lose that battle against Caroline, at least nobody will be unpleasantly surprised.


	36. Humans Never Change

The job finding process was indeed a failure, but the housing process went a little bit better – although only because the government worker left for while in the middle of the meeting, leaving a computer unattended and not expecting any outsider to be as technically inclined as GLaDOS. Or technically inclined at all, considering there was no password, it took her only a few minutes to arrange for her and the moron not only an apartment, but a furnished apartment. If only they would be as lucky getting jobs because it seemed that, as far as Caroline was concerned, they could live in a garbage can and it would be okay as long as they had somewhere to work.

On the way to their new home, GLaDOS wrote down every store and restaurant that had a "Help Wanted" sign (or any variation thereof) while the little idiot rambled on about unrelated things. She tried to ignore him, but his annoying little voice kept digging through her head. The apartments were in a bad part of the city, not out of a dislike for the outsiders, but when one puts a lot of people having questionable financial situations in one place, that place was bound to become bad.

"…But I don't know, what do you think?" Wheatley asked.

The question in his voice was enough to make GLaDOS pay attention. She looked away from her notebook. What had she been writing there?

Well, she had written how the….task execution was going, but…they hadn't done anything that she…that she could test. What? Had she just written "we're walking down the street; we're walking down the street" again and again? He…really didn't know what to expect from her anymore. He used to think she was pretty…simple? No, "simple" was the wrong word. But she was her, big, scary, psychotic her and that's was it. Even while…everything was happening…"the Event" as she called it…she was still…the-thing-he-couldn't-find-the-word-for-it-now-but-it-was-not-"simple". Now that they were a team…well, she'd never call it a "team", but it was kind of like that… she was acting odd.

Wait, wait, wait, he wasn't thinking about that, he was asking her something.

"You didn't even listen to what I said, did you?" he asked. "I, I listen to everything YOU say! I mean, even when it's not important or about…how long I've been talking to myself?!"

"I believe you were first activated at…at…" Say something quickly, never mumble, never ramble. This is what humans do, humans and the moron. You have higher standards then that. "…somewhere around March 1992"

Wheatley made small frustrated noises, before suddenly stopping, surprised. "…Huh…" he said.

GLaDOS was even more surprised. "And by that I meant that nobody has ever listened to you." Maybe he's so stupid he didn't understand that I was trying to say, "Nobody ever respected you and nobody will ever will."

"Yeah, I got that. It just…not as insulting as it should be, if I'm honest. Weird." Wheatley shrugged. "Well, I guess it's not really the first time that you've said something like that today, or, or in the last couple of days, actually. Maybe I'm kind of getting used to it."

GLaDOS stared at him for a second, clenching her pencil, before continuing to write. Half of her was slightly disturbed by this development but half of her was pleased that this test had actually produced results. Even if not very deadly ones.

"Well, how would you feel if you were told you were a failure in anything you ever did, that I would rather go through all of this with my legs tied together then with you, and that you were a monster who only cares for himself?"

He seemed to react to the last one, although he tried to hide it by repeating "It's fine, it's fine, I don't care at all" over and over.

Everything was as it should be. Or at least, SOME things were as they should be.

GLaDOS listed his reactions on his "file", then checked a number on the side of a building, a building a bit better off than the ones around it. "This is the place."

"Our house?" Wheatley asked. He was a bit excited. Only humans had houses, it was one of the things that were the most annoying about them, especially when they complained about working late.

"Our 'government-assigned temporal resident'," GLaDOS corrected him. "It's only until we find a way back."

"Yeah, I, I was trying to talk to you about that, probably slipped my mind, but-"

GLaDOS dragged him inside the building. She had no time to hear whatever unimportant thing he wanted to say.

Actually, they had a lot of time, but it didn't feel like it to her. Instead, she felt like every second was taking something from her. Probably test subjects, considering they were found in Caroline's memories. She'd had that thought in her head since last night, and she still wasn't sure what was wrong with it. Her breathing was getting heavy as she stood in the elevator.

Wheatley moved around uncomfortably in the small elevator. "So…how long do you think this …how long until we can…eh… fix this?"

"Hopefully we'll find someone suitable in a few weeks," GLaDOS replied. "Someone who's going to trust two outsiders who have no way to back up their claims. Someone who is going to have enough resources to help us." She swallowed suddenly "A rich, overly trusting madman."

Mr. Johnson was one of a kind, but there should be similar sub-species. Humans never change.

The elevator made a small "Ding!" and opened its doors. They got out and found their apartment. GLaDOS used the small gray key that the government worker had issued her.

When they opened the door they discovered that "furnished" meant two beds, a small kitchen with an empty fridge and an old oven, and another door which probably led to the bathroom, all crammed together in a very small space.

"Eh, if you still have that pamphlet, we could, we could check some homeless shelters." Wheatley looked around. He had seen human apartments in movies and they were always bigger then this. "Maybe they'll be bet-"

"No, they won't." GLaDOS threw down the bag containing their jumpsuits. "This is just temporary, remember that."

"Yeah…that's what I was trying to talk with you about." Wheatley chuckled. "It's something I was thinking about, just a little idea. About the whole situation."

"What is it now?" GLaDOS asked with fake disinterest.

"Do we really have to go back?"


	37. The Rest of His Life

"W…What do you mean?" GLaDOS said in shock, as her hand froze and dropped her pencil onto the apartment floor.

"No…nothing! Really, really nothing. It was a bad idea, forget I said that!" Wheatley grinned and tried to back away, only to bump into the wall behind him "…Arrgh, barely enough room to bloody breathe in here!" he said to himself, then turned back to GLaDOS. "Anyway, Just a random thought! That's all"

"What. Do. You. Mean?" GLaDOS said quietly.

"Well… well… what I wanted to say is…" Wheatley looked around, hoping he could find a way to change the subject. "Why don't we settle some of the details about…eh…what are we going to eat tonight…I mean, I don't think there's anything here. It's just…"

"Don't try to distract me." GLaDOS narrowed her eyes. "You're not very good at it."

"No, I'm serious! I…just want to talk about other things! Other things, like the going back process! Maybe we-" Wheatley bit his lip nervously, "maybe we don't need, eh, to convince someone!" He snatched the notebook from her hand and started sketching something, badly. "Maybe we'll just need like…like… a device to control his mind. Only temporarily, just until we can….eh…." He sighed.

GLaDOS stared at Wheatley for a second and snatched the notebook back. He just looked at his hand lifelessly for a second before continuing.

"I have a…I mean, we have a place to live, and, and you said you'll find us jobs, so…we're fine. We can just…LIVE HERE. It's not that bad. I can live with it. Finding someone to take back, would be kind of a bother, wouldn't it? Why don't we just…stop here?"

"Live with it? You've done nothing but complain about being human the whole time." GLaDOS searched her mind for some aspect of human life she had forgotten but could use to get him back in line. Just like last time.

"I'm…I'm getting used to it…I mean, it's not perfect, there's still getting tired and…chewing and…the other thing." Wheatley was smiling, but it was a phony smile. Well, phonier than usual. "But, well, I'm already used to walking! And talking with the whole…complex process they have for some bloody reason. It's getting better! And it's not like I have anything great to return to." He rolled his eyes and sat down on one of the beds. "Just back to my old job, or one of the millions I had. At least the humans here seem to like me. That's pretty new. It's not that bad, and even when it is, well…"

Wheatley was quiet for a moment. With all the things that had happened, it was like the memories were lost in…some sort of thought…flow. They never disappeared, but he wasn't focusing on them. He could ignore them. But now they were suddenly back, as if the entire event had just happened yesterday. Well, minus Space Sphere, naturally. If it WAS just yesterday, he would have been with Space Sphere. "Even when it is sort of bad, I think that…" he bit his lip, "maybe I kind of…deserve it…"

"So a few of the things that I say do get through to your head!" GLaDOS voice cracked slightly, trying to hide Caroline's pity.

And here I though you had learned your lesson about the little idiot back in our visit to Old Aperture.

"You think this is a punishment? Very cute. And what about me? I have things to do. It might be hard for someone of your…status to understand, but some of us actually MATTER. It's only a matter of time before Aperture will lie in ruins. Again."

"Well, I can think about a few things you need to be punished fo-"

Wheatley stopped himself, somewhat surprised at what he just said. "Eh…I mean, eh, maybe I should really start think about what I'm saying."

"And you're REALLY the one who can tell me what's wrong," GLaDOS said sarcastically, but not in a particularly hostile way.

Wheatley wasn't used to her being so calm about those sorts of things. Well, not in her scary-calm way, but just…not that angry. It was kind of scary in its own way. It was also kind of scary in that he wasn't sure if she really didn't care or simply pretending. In his typical stupidity, he decided to try his luck again.

"And, and you can't really tell me!" His voice was full of fake pride, but he was shaking.

"At least I had reasons outside of my own selfishness. Besides, that thinking ahead you said you were going to try wouldn't work. Not thinking ahead is part of your programming. It's part of who you are."

"You'd think that, considering our situation, you'd think that those sorts of things wouldn't matter." He chuckled. "I mean, if anything is going to be any sort of a 'new start', it's this."

"…I don't even want to think about that…" GLaDOS said in disgust.

"Beside, why do you even care? Why do you care what I want to do?" Wheatley asked. "You could just do it on your own! Why do you need me?"

Because humans like you, and you can be friendly and trustworthy. Of course, he can't know that.

"Maybe I do care about you," GLaDOS teased.

They both looked at each other, then they started to laugh. Wheatley, especially, was laughing so hard he rolled of the bed.

"That was…you're funny. That was pretty good." He got up back onto the bed. After relaxing for a minute he remembered something. "Care? I just said exactly why I would rather spend the rest of my life-"

Rest of his life? Well, I was searching for a way to convince him and he just handed it to me on silver platter.

"And that's what I was trying to talk about. The rest of your life. The humans who put that sentence into your databank, how are they?"

"I'm…not really sure who they were. Probably just a bunch of…humans. Nobody ever allowed me to see my own file. But…you probably killed them. Unless, unless they quit for some reason before your…you know…in that case-"

Wheatley's face went white with terror.

"The humans who coined that phrase, the humans who said it. They had a reason to say it. It's 'the rest of your life', because there's an end." GLaDOS smirked. "And you'll have one, too, if you decide to stay in this body. It'll decay and age, taking your mind, well, whatever mind you have, with it and then…"

"And then what?" Wheatley asked, hopefully.

"And then nothing. You'll feel nothing, do nothing, think nothing, which at least should be something you're familiar with. You'll go away. You'll die and rot away. Like all humans."

GLaDOS was becoming aggressive. She was no longer sure if it was the moron she was talking to.

"And that will be the end. Who's going to remember you? And even if there was someone, they'll be gone too. And then there will be just a grave. Just a name carved in stone in a sea of carved names. And nothing else."

Wheatley stared at her, too afraid to shake, too afraid to shout, almost too afraid to speak. "How, how long will I have? I mean, if-"

"Sixty years, maybe up to one hundred if you're lucky."

One hundred years? That would be less than half of his life! And that would be it? That was nothing! He couldn't… he couldn't die; even if he had time…it was-"

Death. The perfect choice. There was no real way for him to get over that fear. It was almost too good.

GLaDOS got up.

"WAIT! WAIT! Where are you going?" Wheatley panicked, grabbing her by her shirt. "When I was saying that you don't need me, I ACTUALLY meant-"

"The bathroom," GLaDOS pointed at the door. "If we're going to get anyone rich and powerful to help us, we probably shouldn't smell like we hadn't showered in three days." She took his hand off, went inside and closed the door, leaving the other Ex-A.I nervously staring at it.

It was okay, it was not like them. He had another choice. Just to…keep living, or existing. It was fine.


	38. The (Not So) Hot Shower Scene

A "bathroom", huh. A "shower-room" would have been a more fitting name. Although maybe it was called that because it was about the size of a bath. Like everything else in their lousy apartment, it was laughably small and somewhat dirty. Never mind, they weren't going to be here that long.

After a few seconds of messing around to find the right temperature, GLaDOS just gave up and allowed the water, which somehow managed to be both too hot and too cold at the same time, to pour over her head. In theory, this was the end of her shower; no soap, no shampoo – just washing the dirt away. She could just get out now, but…this was going to be one of her only opportunities to be alone. Without the moron rambling so much white noise into her head, she started to realize how much it ached. A few more minutes of solitude couldn't hurt. She sighed with relief.

Talking about death made her a bit nervous, too. Not as much as it did the little idiot, but a bit. No worry, there would be a way out. And of course, for some reason, Caroline found that solution a bad thing…of course she did, what should GLaDOS expect otherwise? She rolled her eyes.

Caroline, of all people, would find that a bad thing. She should have known the kind of things age brings. She was there, watching Mr. Johnson deteriorate. From illness, yes, but also from age. Well, even if Mr. Johnson was a bad example, you should have….you should have…

Probably test subjects, considering they were found in Caroline's memories.

Caroline was HUMAN, her life hadn't started and ended in the facility. And yet GLaDOS had assumed it did. She assumed that anything from Caroline's memory was from Caroline's workplace. Why? Why had GLaDOS thought that? How could she not notice the problem with that assumption?

Against GLaDOS's better judgment, she ran over all of the flashbacks Caroline had ever caused in her mind. All of them were from Aperture. Had Caroline ever had a family? Or friends? Well, maybe not friends, considering a few factors…but she could've seen that homeless man on a street or something like that. And yet GLaDOS had assumed that Caroline had nothing outside of Aperture. How could she miss something this obvious?

GLaDOS realized that despite Caroline living in her mind, she didn't really know that much about her.

The water kept pouring, and GLaDOS wondered if maybe she should turn it off. Some time alone was nice, but they'd have to pay the water bill sooner or later. She needed to buy another notebook to keep track of the finances.

She did turn the water off, and the calming almost-silence turned into a very annoying complete silence. Perhaps Caroline's life had been so unimportant that there had never been a reason to trigger such memories. Closing her eyes, GLaDOS tried her best to recall something, no matter how pointless, just so she could prove this hypothesis.

Nothing.

Everything that happened when Caroline got into her car and drove home at the end of most days just disappeared.

GLaDOS tried to process this information. Caroline had managed to block the memories of the transfer, but GLaDOS could understand that. And Caroline stupidly thought that being trapped in this body was a good thing and wanted to stop GLaDOS from reversing it.

But what was going on with the so-called "normal" memories? There hadn't been some sort of tragedy or anything like that, as Caroline's file would have mentioned it. Caroline hadn't built a wall around THOSE memories. Instead both GLaDOS and Caroline were standing on one side of the wall, shrugging.

GLaDOS buried her face in her hands. How could she not have seen it before?

A voice was heard from the other side of the door. "Eh, eh, Excuse me? Are you…are you done there? Because…I can't hear the water and, and I'm pretty sure that I'm supposed to be…" "You know, I think I'm supposed to have a turn in this whole getting clean. So…do you hear me? When are getting out? Hello?"

GLaDOS quickly got out of the shower and put her clothes back on. They were the same clothes she'd worn when she slept on the street last night, which ruined whatever feeling of refreshment the shower could've given her. She opened the door so fast that it almost hit the idiot in the face and grabbed her pencil and notebook, writing furiously.

"Oh! Thanks! That's…that's, eh, really nice from you…I think," Wheatley said. He closed the door, and after several seconds, opened it again. "What are you writing there?"

"The effects of solitude and soft repetitive sounds on the human brain" she replied, with a sigh.


	39. Time Passes By

By the end of the week the two had settled into a routine, which mostly involved wandering through the city and looking for jobs. Once or twice or ten times Wheatley would just jump in front of random people in suits and ask them if they were rich, overly trusting madmen – before GLaDOS dragged him away. A small part of her noted that he might have been doing it less and less as time went by, but she quickly shook that thought away as he could never learn. That was the whole point of his programming.   
Nobody really paid well, but they found something in a crappy fast food place. Things were stabilizing. The job (and especially the smells) didn’t help their hatred of eating, but it was something. However a few weeks went by without their finding anyone who would believe them. The moron kept complaining that they weren't finding anyone because she wouldn’t let him do whatever idiotic thing he had in mind. They would find someone when they would come across them, and then they would…well, Mr. Johnson would have been convinced by a doodle on a note, if presented correctly. But these people were probably more sane. No to worry. Promises of lost technology would bring someone and then… and then…  
GLaDOS decided to attribute her inability to plan what to do next to Caroline, or maybe the little idiot. Everything was fine; they would find a way out.  
On a completely unrelated topic, sleeping had become increasingly irregular; she wrote it in her notebook.   
After another week passed without any progress (she listed a few "Unsatisfactory" comments in her notebook) she decided to look at other sources. While she had never connected to the Internet in her original body, she did have some information about what the Internet was. Apparently, it was full of gullible idiots, as well as some disgusting human stuff – but that was an angle best left unexplored.   
A lot of time was spent in libraries; she made a website and tried to maintain it. She had after all, been responsible for the Aperture Science website for a while. But… standards had marched on since those days. She noticed it when she looked at some other popular sites. She also didn't really know how to make people read her site. Threatening to kill people with neurotoxin hardly worked if there was no actual neurotoxin involved. There must be a way, though, there must be.   
And it was especially frustrating because every single time she had to use one of those annoying interface methods like a keyboard, or a mouse. She missed – no, she needed – the ability to really connect with the other computer. Every time she had to click, or type, it made her want to bite those stupid human fingers off her body.  
While sitting at one of the computers in the public library, she would always watch the idiot out of the corner of her eye. She didn't want him to cause troubles on his own. But he would be mostly trying to read books while facing such difficult problems as; his own bottomless stupidity, his tendency to not notice he was holding the book upside-down until he was halfway through the thing, and GLaDOS occasionally bothering him. But that was justifiable, right? She had to vent her frustration somehow.  
"WELL!" Wheatley raised his voice, after she knocked him on the head with a book, making his cheap plastic eyeglasses launch off his nose and onto the table. He remembered where he was and lowered his voice. "well, you don't see anyone else just throwing books at people's head, do you, luv?" Wheatley looked around. "Well, you don't see anyone, because we're the only ones here, but- well, us and the library lady-"   
At that point the librarian coughed politely. "Yeah, that's because it closing time" She rolled her eyes; the two outsiders always came as early as they could and had to be told when to leave. Always. "Out you go!"  
This time there was no argument, for a change. GLaDOS was too tired for that and with a sigh quickly dragged Wheatley away.  
A few seconds after the doors to the library were locked; something seemed to click in Wheatley's mind. He moved his hand to the area where his glasses were supposed to be, chuckled in embarrassment and then started searching his empty pockets, mumbling "no! No! No! No! No!" He then looked at the library doors and wondered how he could try to open them while shouting in panic, without GLaDOS noticing.   
"You forgot your glasses" GLaDOS said in a monotone voice, cutting off his train of thoughts.  
"Well… well… well" Wheatley rolled his eyes "…yes, maybe, maybe!" He checked his empty pockets again "Well… yes…"  
GLaDOS groaned, the lights inside the library had started to turn off. She grabbed his arm and kept going. "We'll get them in the morning" she said.   
Wheatley blinked a bit, trying to focus his blurry vision, and kept going, mumbling an explanation to GLaDOS why it wasn't his fault.  
Meanwhile, inside the library, a janitor was cleaning the floor. She was a woman who probably should have been doing something else with her life. She was young, after all, and she still had an entire future ahead of her. At least that's what other people said to her.   
Suddenly she noticed a pair of glasses sitting on one of the tables, near the computers. They looked odd, as far as she could tell. While they were completely functional eyeglasses, their frame was made from cheap white plastic. She picked them up and took a half-interested closer look.  
She saw the light blue logo marked on the side of the glasses, and felt her hands shaking.  
"Aperture Laboratories", it read, next to the all too familiar symbol.   
Chell's eyes widened, as her mind began processing the implications.


	40. This Chell is a Spy!

"Nope, it's not there either." Wheatley shook his head and returned from under the desk. "Are you…are you sure that that's where we were last night?"

GLaDOS and the librarian looked at each other and nodded.

"Well, unless the computers just got up and rearranged themselves to spite us," GLaDOS replied with a grin.

"Yeah! Computers doing stuff on their own! What a ridiculous concept!" Wheatley laughed a spectacularly bad laugh. "That's just obviously absurd. Heh, I mean-"

GLaDOS glared at him and he stopped talking.

Luckily, the librarian wasn't really paying attention to his display of idiocy. As much as having to tell them to shove off every night was annoying, losing glasses was a pretty big deal so she was busy thinking about what could've happened to them.

"Maybe... Maybe someone took them?" she said, mostly to herself. "No, it can't be. You were the only ones here during closing time, and we've just opened. Nobody was here outside of the..."

The librarian suddenly realized something and ran to a small room, near the entrance to the library.

Chell watched as the man and the woman followed the librarian into the room, and slowly lowered the book she was pretending to read. She was sitting across the library, so she couldn't quite hear what they were talking about. But she knew what they were doing, looking for the plastic framed glasses.

She took them out of her jacket at checked them again, as if she was afraid that the logo had disappeared since the last time she looked.

It had been five years.

Five years since she was freed, since she found herself among other humans again. Since she had to re-learn to…interact with other people. With mixed results.

Okay, okay, the results were always terrible, but now there were two more like her – two more people who managed to escape. They would understand her, they wouldn't think she was nuts.

She put the glasses back in her jacket and returned to watching the door.

Meanwhile, inside the office, the librarian found what she was looking for.

"There we go! The janitor's number!" She pulled out the paper. "She was the only one here after you left."

"And you think that this, eh, she could've taken my glasses?" Wheatley asked, not because he didn't understand but because he hadn't spoken at all in the last minute, and he felt that he needed to.

The librarian simply shrugged. She took the phone from the desk and dialed the number, setting the phone on speaker. "Hello?"

"Yes, Hello?" A female voice answered from the other side.

"I'm working at the public library," the librarian said, "and I'm looking for…" she checked the paper, "…Ms. Yamamoto?"

"Oh! You're looking for my roommate!" the voice said. "Sorry, she's not at home right now."

"I don't assume that she told you where she was going?" Wheatley interjected.

The voice chuckled. "Have you MET her?"

Wheatley instinctively looked at GLaDOS, she shook her head.

"Anyway, I can try and call her but that doesn't always work," the woman on the other side of the line continued. "Why are you looking for her?"

"It's about her job," the librarian replied.

"I'll call her." There was a noise, that the people in the office guessed was the woman taking out her cell phone and calling a number. "Wait a second…"

From outside the room, Chell noticed her old, cheap cell phone was buzzing. The caller I.D said it was Gabrielle. She hung up; she didn't have time for that now. More important things were happening.

Suddenly the voice started talking again, probably to her phone. "Chell? Chell? Dammit!" The woman sighed. "She hung up on me, typical. Sorry, but I can't help you."

But it wasn't necessary, as GLaDOS and Wheatley weren't in the room anymore. GLaDOS was running away as fast as she could, dragging Wheatley behind her.

Chell.

Exactly the last thing she needed right now. Now that she needed to struggle against Caroline. Now that she needed to keep the moron under check. Now that she needed to focus.

Of course, there is always the possibility that this was just an unfortunate coincidence. And that the Chell they were talking about was someone else, considerably less of a horrible, brilliant, ungrateful monster.

No, no there wasn't a chance. It was her. The name was hardly common. The surname, well, it was possible she had changed it since she was f-LEFT. Maybe she didn't like [REDACTED]. This was the only place she could've gone to. And when that human on the phone talked about her, she implied that she didn't talk much. It was her.

"Eh, what's going on?" Wheatley asked "I mean-"

"We're leaving. It's… just….we can't…" GLaDOS tried to think of a good lie. "We can't be here."

"But, what about my glasses?" Wheatley blinked a few times, trying to focus his vision.

"I'll… buy you new ones," GLaDOS said, even though she knew they don't have the money for that.

Chell noticed the pair leaving the room and walking towards the library entrance. She waited a bit, until they were far enough away to make it less obvious she was following them, before walking out onto the crowded street and going after them. As inconspicuously as possible.


	41. Meeting Again

Chell knew that this wasn't really the way to start a friendship, but she… she wasn't sure what her options were. Just walking up to them and saying- well, that was out of the question, definitely. Maybe she should've just left a note next to the glasses when she first found them, but… she wanted to be sure first.

Oh, there was no point in thinking about "what if' or "I should have done". Just focus on what to do next. Focus on reality.

If she had just decided not to go to "Bring Your Daughter to Work Day", she wouldn't be here today. If she had taken off her gas mask and had given it to her dad, then maybe…

She tucked the horrible thoughts away where they belonged. Focus on the present.

She had already started following them, so she just kept on doing it. It was wrong, but she didn't know what else to do.

Normal life was so hard for her sometimes.

They didn't notice her; she was good at not being noticed. She knew where they lived, and where they worked – later she could come over and meet them properly. They didn't live far from where she was staying.

She didn't try to listen in on what they talked about, as she considered that a bit too much. Here and there she heard a word, but she tried to ignore it. She just wanted to know where she could find them. Not to actually spy on them. She was not doing a very good job, but still.

It seemed that they were talking a lot, mostly arguing. But everyone talked too much as far as she was concerned. Never mind, it would be okay. They had been through the same things she had been through, they would understand her silence.

She leant on a wall of a building, across the street from the fast food place where they worked. Life was good, for a change. Soon she wouldn't be alone. She wondered what she should do next.

Probably best… probably best to just leave now. I just wanted to know where I could find them, now I need to stop following them until I-

Her phone started ringing, her roommate again. She rolled her eyes. Speaking of talking too much...

"Chell? What gives? I called you five times and you never answered!" Gabrielle said from the other side of the line. "It was actually important, about your job. I texted you about it, or did you decide that you don't read texts anymore, too?"

Chell made a small "hmm." sound, the kind that usually accompanied a shrug. She was too busy and didn't notice.

"Anyway, like I said, it's about your job," Gabrielle continued. "Something has gone missing, and… I'm afraid that they think you stole it."

Chell's hand automatically clasped the white-framed glasses harder.

"Don't worry, I told them there's no chance it was you." Gabrielle paused for a minute. "…is this silence supposed to indicate a 'thank you'?"

Chell just sighed.

"Just come home, please," Gabrielle said. "It'll be easier to, uh, communicate that way."

There was a few seconds of complete silence.

"Chell… why do you even own a phone?" Gabrielle asked.

Chell hung up, and started walking towards her home, trying not to eye the door of the fast food place. Just walk like a normal person.

It had been a frustrating day for GLaDOS, more than usual, that is, because of the moron's constant complaining about his missing glasses and all the mess he caused because of it.

She sighed and tapped idly on the counter, looking out on the street, when a woman passed by.

It was her. GLaDOS didn't even need a second to recognize her. The shorter hair, the different clothes - it didn't matter, she knew her.

Automatically, GLaDOS ran outside.

Chell was surprised to see that one of the two people she was following, the woman, left the restaurant and ran after her.

Did...did the woman notice Chell was following them? Did the woman call the police or something? Chell froze for just a second before deciding to keep walking, at slightly faster rate, ignoring the woman. She will understand, in the end, when we finally really meet. Of course she will understand.

GLaDOS wanted to run after her, she was completely ready to go and do it - when she realized what she was doing.

What was she thinking? She couldn't talk to her! The reason Chell...left was because GLaDOS wanted her far away from her as possible. Because she was nothing but trouble and damage and...

And she made Caroline so much more active. Caroline was the one who wanted to talk to Chell, that's what was happening.

Her head began to ache, Chell was already gone, she took a deep breath and went inside - trying her best to act like nothing was wrong. Wheatley stared at her, as he stood in her place behind the cash register.

"What just happened there? You just went...? You just went there! And you're the one who bloody goes about why we need this job," he said, then blinked a few times. "Who was that girl? I couldn't..." He squinted a bit and stared at her.

"No one." GLaDOS got back to her place behind the counter.

"But-"

"No one"

"She was clearly someone" Wheatley continued "why-"

"I... Thought she might've been someone who could help us," GLaDOS said, "but I was wrong." It wasn't her best lie, but it should shut him up for a while.

"Oh!" Wheatley replied, and paused just long enough for GLaDOS to be relieved. Then he went on to ramble about coordination and several words he clearly didn't understand.

GLaDOS tried to tune him out. At least, Chell's reaction meant that she didn't want anything to do with them as well. Chell wouldn't try to kill her again, or get revenge on the moron. Not to mention how the moron would react to finding out Chell was actually alive. She might not even know who they were. That was a good thing. GLaDOS couldn't… she couldn't risk adding Chell into the mix. It made her easier to avoid.

That thought made GLaDOS feel a bit better, until she came back home and saw a piece of paper in their mailbox.

Telling the moron to just go to the apartment while she read the note turned out to be a good idea when she unfolded it and saw what was written on it, in a clumsy yet readable handwriting:

"Sorry for following you. I know where you're from. Meet you tomorrow, your place – Chell"


End file.
